Sergio Marques disappears for a moment to find his phone and retrieve a text message from Bruno Fernandes.
So when did he last hear from Manchester United‘s new signing?
‘Yesterday,’ replies Marques triumphantly as he re-enters the lounge of his apartment brandishing the phone which displays a message in Portuguese from his former protégé.
Bruno Fernandes pictured with Sergio Marques, who was his first coach at FC Infesta
A team picture of the U9 team Marques coached at Infesta. Fernandes is bottom row, far left
After battling his way to the top, Fernandes is eager to make an impact for Manchester United
‘Thanks for everything,’ writes Fernandes. ‘I’m good. It’s going to be fine.’
Marques was his first coach in football. They met when Fernandes was eight-years-old and joined FC Infesta, a club in Matosinhos north west of Porto.
Marques was the Under-9s coach and saw a gift in Fernandes that convinced him to offer the boy one-to-one sessions on a Tuesday night, honing his skills on the dirt pitch.
‘From the beginning you could see he had a natural talent, but he always wanted the ball for himself,’ says the 65-year-old, who would play Fernandes as a centre-back in the harder games and then allow him to dominate in midfield when the opposition weren’t as strong.
‘He wasn’t very keen on passing, heading and defending. I took him to one side and said: “Bruno, you have the talent but you need to work on these areas. Is that something you want to do?” He said yes and that’s when we started the one-to-one sessions.’
A team picture of Pasteleira, with Fernandes third from left in the bottom row
Fernandes playing for Boavista’s youth team – he was described as being like ‘a wild horse’
Fernandes comes from a poor background in the industrial city of Maia. He lived with his parents, elder brother Rodrigo and younger sister Sara in a modest first-floor apartment in Gueifães, a district on the outskirts of town.
His father José worked in the Piu Belle textile factory and neither he nor the boy’s mother Virgínia could drive, so Infesta’s club secretary would take Fernandes to the ramshackle stadium.
When the big clubs beckoned two years later, he would have preferred to join his boyhood team FC Porto but Boavista’s offer of transport to and from training tipped the balance in their favour.
Fernandes has never let his slight frame hold him back. Rather shy off the pitch, he became increasingly aggressive on it. When he switched to Boavista’s B-team ADR Pasteleira, driving duties fell to his Under-15 coach Antonio Peres six nights a week – and so too did the task of taming the fiery youngster.
‘He was like a wild horse,’ says Peres. ‘He had long hair like a girl and he was a rebel.
He learned to play football in the street and his fight, his character, his language came from the streets.
Fernandes pictured in a Boavista U17s team sheet, which was kept by Mauro Borghetti
‘There was a lot of competition for places and sometimes he would go over the top in training. He would fight with his teammates and I had to send him out of the session to cool off.
‘He told me many times he wanted to be a top player to get a better life because the family was poor. Everyone wants that, but only a few can get it.’
Fernandes was a bad loser but also a natural leader from an early age. Peres laughs as he recalls him being a ringleader when Pasteleira left away games with a few more footballs than when they arrived, or the times when he caught the boys watching films instead of sleeping the night before a tournament.
What, adult movies? ‘No, no, no, no …. well, maybe!’
Pasteleira’s cut of Fernandes’s move from Sporting to United will be roughly £170,000, significantly more than they made off the success of two other old boys, Everton’s Andre Gomes and Benfica’s rising star Chiquinho.
Antonio Peres coached United’s new signing Fernandes at ADR Pasteleira at U15 and U16 level
‘Bruno had difficulties but never gave up,’ says Pasteleira’s academy co-ordinator Miguel Pedro.
‘He will be a big help to Solskjaer and the players at Manchester United. I saw his first game (against Wolves) and he was like a boss on the pitch.
‘After one training session there, he was telling Aaron Wan-Bissaka what to do. Wan-Bissaka was probably thinking “who is this guy talking to me?” but Bruno was doing that at 15-years-old.’
At Fernandes’ old school, Escola Basica 2/3 Gueifães, his English teacher Cristina Almeida remembers a boy whose only dream was to be a footballer and one day play in the Premier League.
‘He was a special one,’ she says. ‘I can still see him running to the classroom, the football under his arm, sweating and panting and me having him wash his face before going to his place.
Fernandes pictured with his old youth-team director at Boavista, Ricardo Gaia
‘He had a hard time balancing his studies with training and matches, let alone homework. Sometimes he couldn’t do it so I would get angry and say: “Bruno, do you think you’re going to be another Cristiano Ronaldo? Do you? Forget the football, do your homework and study. That is your future, okay?”.
‘He used to look down and nod in silence. Luckily for him and the rest of us, I was wrong!’
Fernandes moved to another school closer to Boavista at age of 15 where he met his future wife Ana Pinho. She remembers them kissing for the first time in front of a gum shop close to the school.
Her brother Miguel became his agent and it was on his recommendation that Italian club Novara decided to take a closer look.
Novara’s sporting director Cristiano Giaretta despatched the head of his academy, Mauro Borghetti, to Portugal to watch Fernandes play for Boavista Under-17s.
Fernandes in action for Novara, where he arrived not knowing anyone or how to speak Italian
‘At first glance he didn’t impress me,’ recalls Borghetti. ‘He wasn’t above average and even the movement of his body didn’t show great athleticism.
‘But during the game, I realised that his play was full of personality. He had no fear of dribbling or shooting on goal.’
Novara agreed to pay Boavista a total of £33,500 in two instalments, and it says much about Fernandes’s character that he was prepared to leave home at the age of 17 and move to Italy.
Juventus and Fiorentina were also hovering, but the teenager saw a better prospect of first-team football in Serie B with Novara.
Fernandes scored a hat-trick in his first game for the Under-19s but had to wait several months for his senior debut. By then, money was tight because paperwork issues over his first professional contract meant that his basic wage of £1,260-a-month wasn’t paid until midway through the season.
‘From June to February I had €50 that my mother gave me when I left Portugal,’ Fernandes told Portuguese newspaper Record.
‘Arriving in Novara, not knowing anyone, not talking the language, having no one who could translate what had to be done, it was very difficult.’
Fernandes developed well at Udinese, where he spent three years before joining Sampdoria
Fernandes’s parents and Ana visited him four times during his year at the club and he worked hard to settle in at the Hotel Novarello, his home at Novara’s training complex in Piedmont.
Giaretta describes a fiercely dedicated teenager who was regularly first in and last out at training. Better still, he mastered Italian quickly by writing words on bits of paper stuck to everything in his apartment.
‘On the chair, the fridge, the wardrobe, everywhere,’ says Giaretta. ‘After one month, he was already able to speak Italian and this was really impressive to me.
‘He was different to the other guys. I’ve never known a player with so much desire to be the best. He wants to be someone. Not just one of the best, but the best. Playing for Manchester United is a way of doing that.’
There were up to 20 other young players staying with Fernandes at Novarello. They remember him sulking for two hours at a time if he lost at table tennis or table football.
‘He wouldn’t accept defeat in training matches either,’ adds Borghetti.
‘When he arrived in Novara, we hoped he would get into the first team. Then we were all his fans when he made his debut in Serie A. We saw him score in the Europa League and play in the World Cup with Ronaldo.
Fernandes plays alongside ex-United star Cristiano Ronaldo for Portugal at international level
‘Now he plays for one of the most important clubs in the world. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if he won the Ballon d’Or too!’
Fernandes’s natural talents continued to blossom at Novara: the dribbling, the passing, the blockbuster long-range shots and set-piece deliveries.
It earned him a move to Udinese, getting a pay rise and a Smart car into the bargain.
For the first few months, Fernandes’s pet labrador Simba kept him company but the dog was sent home to Maia when Ana joined Bruno permanently in Italy.
She was able to cook his favourite dish, the francesinha, a meat and cheese sandwich served with French fries that is popular in Porto and so stodgy that he is only allowed it once a month.
The couple married in 2015 while he was at Udinese and their daughter Matilde was born two years later.
By then, Fernandes had moved to Sampdoria, but he only spent one season there before returning to Portugal with Sporting Lisbon.
It was at Sporting that he truly came of age. Captain. Talisman. Star player. Fernandes finished last season with 32 goals and 18 assists, establishing himself as the most productive midfielder in Europe.
Fernandes became a superstar at Sporting Lisbon, which attracted the interest of United
He lifted the Portuguese Cup and two Portuguese League Cups in Lisbon, but was at the centre of a controversy last year when a WhatsApp audio of him ranting about teammates was leaked.
‘Some players have no fight and don’t want to be here – they can f***k off,’ Fernandes was heard saying. It was telling, however, that the rest of the squad still backed him.
He was also caught on CCTV swearing at a security guard after lashing out with his right boot at a door when he was sent off on his return to Boavista in September, the wild horse still packing a kick.
It followed a summer of speculation over a move to England with United or Tottenham. Sporting were ready to sell their crown jewel to help keep the club afloat but were holding out for a fee of £66.5m.
‘We had a cash flow requirement of £95.5m and Bruno was key to this,’ Sporting president Frederico Varandas revealed last week.
United revived their interest in January under pressure to deliver a new signing and, in particular, a player like Fernandes who could ignite their attack.
They agreed to pay an initial £46.6m and a further £21.2m could be due in bonuses, including one if he wins the Ballon d’Or. Those who have followed his career wouldn’t rule it out.
Even more will be expected of Fernandes when United take on Chelsea on Monday night
Fernandes broke down in tears in his farewell TV interview in Portugal and Sporting fans wept with him, but the player has got his dream move at the age of 25.
He touched down in Manchester by private jet with Ana, Matilde and his agent Miguel Pinho on January 29 and made his debut in a goalless draw with Wolves three days later.
A promising start saw Fernandes complete more passes and have more shots than any of his teammates.
On Monday night, even more will be expected from his first away game against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge after a week integrating with the rest of the United squad at a warm-weather training camp in Marbella.
Naturally, Fernandes gravitated towards United’s Portuguese speaking players – Diogo Dalot, Fred and Andreas Pereira – but he chose a Spanish song for his initiation in front of the squad on Monday night, and the Spanish contingent joined in with the chorus.
If he can call the tune as well on the pitch, United may just have found their man in the boy from Maia.
