Fifty years on from Munich, Sir Bobby Charlton’s role has changed from heartbroken survivor to missionary on behalf of the friends he lost on that fateful day. A thousand questions haunt him about the way eight Manchester United team-mates perished as a result of the disaster on February 6, 1958, but these days he prefers to talk of their legacy to the modern-day players who carry the torch for those lost, lamented Busy Babes.

A couple of weeks ago, with the 50th anniversary looming, Charlton was invited to address the United first-team squad and youth-team players as part of an initiative to raise their awareness of the tragedy and its place in the club’s history.

After he spoke he sat down with the players in a darkened room and watched a DVD that the club had made about Munich. A tear came to his eye, but he was not necessarily alone as the scale of the disaster dawned on Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo and the rest. Sir Alex Ferguson said “you could have heard a pin drop”, while even Gary Neville, part of the furniture at Old Trafford, admitted that he had never heard Charlton speak “at such close quarters and with such intimacy”.

“It was a tragedy,” Charlton said as he faced the media in advance of Wednesday’s anniversary. “When I heard who had been killed, it was like someone reading out the names of pals you go to the dance hall with, lads who would have you round for dinner at Christmas. It’s really upsetting, even today. But it’s better for me to tell people how good they were.

“That’s the most important thing. People don’t believe me sometimes when I tell them how good Duncan Edwards was, Tommy Taylor, David Pegg, Eddie Colman, Billy Whelan. They all had unbelievable talent.

“The anniversary is an opportunity to let people know how good that team was and why it’s such a big event. We were almost certainly going to be the first team to win the European Cup. And they had players who were playing for England — Duncan Edwards, for example — who might well have been playing in 1966. Duncan was young enough. What a fantastic player he was.”

Someone asked how Edwards, for example, would compare with Rooney. “It’s not even worth mentioning,” Charlton said. “We can talk about Wayne Rooney when he’s retired.” And yet parallels will be drawn with the modern-day United, particularly as they resume their campaign to lift the European Cup in the year of this landmark anniversary.

“I actually have a bit of nervousness about this season,” Ferguson, the United manager, said, a lump in his throat. “I have to confess that it makes me a wee bit nervous. It’s maybe a good thing the fear of failure is upon us. But I do think we have the right players to do it. Munich may be an incentive; who knows, it may be the biggest handicap of all. But I think the players we have are not afraid of challenges.”

The only thing that United, as a club, are afraid of is that the memory of the victims may be tarnished when a minute’s silence is held before the home match against Manchester City a week tomorrow, and the England match against Switzerland on Wednesday.

“I would be very disappointed if people don’t behave accordingly when the match takes place and they have a message to be quiet,” Charlton said. “I think they will behave because I think City respect what Manchester United did at that particular time. I hope they give respect to us because that team, in many ways, were pioneers.

“It’s an unbelievable tragedy. For the people who survived, all we can say is that we were lucky and try to let people know just what a loss those lads were to Manchester United and to English football as a whole.”