Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola revealed how Sir Alex Ferguson almost made lose being appointed as Bayern Munich boss after bumping into Uli Hoeness by chance in New York.
Guardiola met with the Bayern president, the son of a butcher who is co-owner of a sausage company, went to Chicago to visit supermarket chain Aldi.
It was after the meeting, Hoeness convinced him to succeed Jupp Heynckes at Bayern in the summer of 2013.
But the deal almost hit a brick wall by Alex Ferguson who was also paying a visit to the city of New York at the same time.
Luckily for Pep, Hoeness could fall back on his sausage business to throw the Scot off the scent.
"That is true. Uli has a big, big company for sausages in Germany. They are really good," Guardiola, now Manchester City manager, told BBC Radio 5 Live.
"They met each other. Sir Alex invited me to have dinner together before and after he met Uli. That happened."
President Hoeness gave his account of the chance meeting to German newspaper Bild in December 2013, saying: "It was partly a business trip for my company.
"I went to Chicago first to visit Aldi. I knew that Pep was about to fly to Barcelona for his holidays and that a meeting there would have been far more dangerous, so we decided I would meet him in the States, where the risk of being spotted was smaller.
"I wanted to take him out for a meal, but that night Alex Ferguson was dining in the very same restaurant.
"It certainly would not have been funny had he seen me and Pep together."
But the former Barcelona boss said he benefited from Ferguson's words of wisdom since the Scotsman retired in 2013.
"When I was a Barcelona player, around 20 or 21 years old, sometimes at Christmas time I came to buy books in London and I bought an autobiography of Sir Alex," he said.
"It was not possible to become one of his players at the end of my career but after we played each other in Barcelona, I met him as a person and he is fantastic.
"That is a joy of being a manager in football, to meet extraordinary people. I am very happy he is recovering well [from his brain haemorrage] and when I saw him at Old Trafford again with all the people clapping, he deserved it.
"All our respect, I am so glad he is coming back [to health]."
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