The real Bruno Fernandes: Uncovering the hidden side of Man United’s ‘Captain Marmite’

One by one, Bruno Fernandes introduced his team-mates in the style of a talent show host and invited them to sing, the Manchester United captain relishing his role as compere.

It was February 19. United’s squad and a number of staff were dining at Brazilian restaurant Jardim Rodizio Grill in Altrincham after an evening spent tenpin bowling at Lane7, where the party of 50-plus also played pool and darts.

Fernandes had organised everything and paid for it all himself. Finally, he took centre stage to coax United’s new players to stand up and perform their initiation songs – two January recruits, Patrick Dorgu and Ayden Heaven, and late summer signings like Joshua Zirkzee, Matthijs de Ligt, Manuel Ugarte and Noussair Mazraoui, who must have thought they had got away with it having joined too late for the ritual on tour in the US.

Fernandes recognised the need for a team-bonding session. A United side described by head coach Ruben Amorim as possibly the worst in the club’s history had played like it in back-to-back Premier League defeats by Crystal Palace and Tottenham.

Morale was also low among club staff whose fears of 200 more redundancies were about to be confirmed.

So Fernandes made the bookings and sent out the invites, making sure to include everyone connected with the first-team including the physiotherapy, sports science and travel departments.

‘We came away from it feeling closer than we thought,’ said one insider.

Three days later at Goodison Park, it felt like it never happened. United trailed 2-0 to Everton at half-time and were on course for a hat-trick of league defeats having played as badly as ever.

As they emerged for the second half, former Everton defender Derek Mountfield, having gone on to the pitch during the interval to mark his induction into the club’s hall of fame, thought he would have a bit of fun by sticking out an elbow towards the players in red.

Fernandes, it’s fair to say, didn’t see the funny side in the circumstances and challenged Mountfield over what he felt was a show of disrespect towards United. Fired up, he dragged his team back into the game with a 25-yard free-kick and United ended up taking a point.

It was the first of seven goals and three assists from the 30-year-old in a seven-game unbeaten run for Amorim’s side ahead of Tuesday’s visit to Nottingham Forest, aside from exiting the FA Cup on penalties to Fulham.

Fernandes’ 16 goals and 15 assists for the season have elevated him alongside Eric Cantona, David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes as the only six United players to reach 50 goals and 50 assists in the Premier League era.

In total, he now has 95 goals and 81 assists in 277 appearances for United since joining from Sporting Lisbon in 2020, moving up to 20th in the club’s all-time scoring charts.

‘It’s still a long way to 121 for Andy Cole and 126 for Ole (Gunnar Solskjaer) but I hope to overtake them,’ he told MUTV in an interview during the international break.

‘Cristiano (Ronaldo) is on 145 goals, very far away, but there’s still time.’

Fernandes’ two penalties in his Europa League hat-trick against Real Sociedad mean he has converted 36 out of 40 attempts from the spot, more than any player in United’s history as he has edged ahead of Rooney and Ruud van Nistelrooy this season.

The stats are all the more remarkable considering he didn’t score once before Erik ten Hag was sacked in late October and was sent off three times before the turn of the year.

But Fernandes is nothing if not resilient. He has turned his season around and prevented United’s from becoming a total disaster. It is no surprise to see him up for the Premier League player of the month award for March.

Yet still it’s not enough for some people. Former United captain Roy Keane has led the criticism of his leadership skills. ‘Fifteenth in the league and he’s saving them? Praise the Lord!’ fumed an impassioned Keane on The Overlap podcast last month.

‘Bruno’s a talented player but talent is not enough. Bruno’s not a fighter.’

When Fernandes spoke to Sky Sports after picking up his man of the match award at Leicester two weeks ago and was asked about criticism, he didn’t shirk the issue.

‘Obviously I know you’re talking about Roy Keane,’ he said, clutching the microphone, before showing great respect – and restraint – towards the Irishman.

‘I accept there is a lot of margin for improvement in my game, my leadership, everything I do, even in my own life.’

Others are turned off by his petulance on the pitch: the constant arm-waving, moaning at referees and calling out his own team-mates. Fernandes himself admits he can get under their skin.

Even Amorim – with whom he has fostered a special relationship from the rest of the squad – admitted after the Leicester game that he had got the wrong impression of Fernandes too.

‘We in Portugal see Bruno with that frustration and I was really surprised – he is a very good professional,’ said United’s head coach.

Another former United captain Bryan Robson is a bigger admirer than Keane, but he admitted last week that ‘I just hope Bruno stays away from the rolling over when he gets tackled and that sort of thing’.

Robson was the original Captain Marvel. Fernandes is more Captain Marmite. You either love him or hate him.

Fortunately, the majority of United fans adore their ‘Portuguese magnifico’ and so do most other people around the club.

They describe a captain who seldom acts off the pitch the way he does on it, even though United’s performances and Amorim’s brief team talks leave plenty of air time for Fernandes to rant and rave.

A player with an encyclopaedic knowledge of European football who usually spends the journey back from away trips glued to his iPad watching games, and routinely stays behind after training for extra shooting practice.

A man who has taken a pastoral approach to United’s young players, checking in with those out on loan and staying in touch with members of staff he was close to who have been made redundant.

They tell the story of the fan who contacted him on Instagram to say he was bringing his autistic son to a United game for the first time. Fernandes insisted the date was put in the diary for the game three months’ later when he made sure to invite the boy into the tunnel afterwards and present him with a signed shirt.

At United, they would challenge Keane’s view that Fernandes is not a fighter. Incredibly, in five years at Old Trafford he has missed just 15 games – and only four of those were due to injury or illness.

‘The willingness to play through the pain is on another level to anyone we’ve ever seen here,’ says one source who has witnessed Fernandes switching between an ice bath and hot jacuzzi for hours on end to alleviate ankle and back injuries this season so he can play in the next game.

Cristiano Giaretta, his sporting director at Udinese and Novara in Italy, remembers this well. ‘If Bruno was injured, he would say, “Don’t check, I just need tape on the ankle”. He had this in his DNA,’ recalls Giaretta, who is still regularly in touch with Fernandes. ‘It’s not only about the quality with Bruno. It’s about his mind and mentality.

‘He never gives up. He has injections in spite of the pain because he wants to be present on the pitch. To play games, to recover and to prevent injury, you have to be like a machine. Bruno is a proper machine.’

It was Giaretta who took Fernandes from Portugal to Novara and was surprised when he visited the teenager at the Novarello training complex and discovered he had put post-it notes written in Italian on every item in his room to help him learn the language.

‘It was very smart but I wasn’t surprised,’ says Giaretta.

‘He didn’t just want to be there, he wanted to know what the coach was saying and have an important say in the team as well.’

Fernandes quickly became a pivotal player for Novara, breaking into the first team in his first season and turning the club’s season around.

When Mail Sport visited Maia, an industrial town outside Porto where he grew up in a first-floor apartment in the Gueifaes district, his coach at ADR Pasteleira remembered Fernandes as a ‘wild horse’.

He had to be taken out of training for fighting and became a ringleader for his team.

‘When we played away, we’d go there with eight or nine balls and come back with 12!’ laughed Antonio Peres.

Above all, he produced an incredible 32 goals and 17 assists in the 2018-19 season as Sporting Lisbon captain to help win two trophies, and galvanise a club fractured by an infamous training ground attack by fans, before he joined United in a deal worth up to £68million in January 2020.

Giaretta, for one, has no doubt that Fernandes is the ultimate talisman far removed from the captain so vilified by Keane.

‘If someone is criticising Bruno, it’s because he doesn’t know his personality or leadership,’ Giaretta adds.

‘You are born a winner and die a winner. This is an important quality for Bruno.

‘He was a man when he was 19, and the coaches trust him because he’s very reliable. For sure, he is helping Amorim like crazy.

‘He is the kind of player you should always pray to God to have in your dressing room.’