I Stayed Because I Was Still Part Of Amorim’s Plan – Bruno Fernandes

Manchester United captain Bruno Fernandes has said that the club was willing to sanction his move to Al Hilal in the summer. He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and fans have been reacting.

According to Fernandes, Omar Berrada told him that even though the club would not reject such a massive Saudi offer, the decision makers never intended to force him to leave Manchester United as well.

Bruno added that he would have understood if the club decided to cash in to raise more funds, but he never felt pressured to leave.

His words, “I had the conversations with Al Hilal, everyone is aware of that. There were also other clubs that tried after Al Hilal, but obviously my answer wouldn’t change. From Saudi, also from Europe.

I had some people talking to me, but we never got into the place where we would be offering on the table or not. The concrete one was from Saudi.

The manager [Ruben Amorim] spoke with me. He said I was still part of the project. He wanted me to stay. The club said the same.

I always said that if the club was like ‘Bruno, we want to cash in, you are 30 years old. We want to make some money. We don’t think you can be part of the future project’ or whatever, I would be like, ‘OK, I have to find a solution for myself, whatever is best for me and my family’ and I will leave.

Obviously that wasn’t the case. I felt that I was still part of the plan.

I think the first time I spoke I was already in Malaysia because that was when everything started. I had a conversation with Omar and I told him, ‘look, this is what is on the table. I know the club might be looking at this in a way.

‘I will be looking at it in a different way so I just want to know from your perspective, from your side, what’s the point of view, what you guys want to do. And then from there on, I will do my things.’

Jason said, like Omar said, we won’t say no but obviously we want you to stay at the club. But if you want to go, we won’t say that it’s not a good offer for us, because it’s massive money.

I spoke with Cristiano about the situation, about Saudi and everything. I wouldn’t say what he told me, but we spoke about it.

The club’s last biggest sale was probably £20m for Daniel James, I’m not very sure.

Scott [McTominay] went above that. But to go from that to the big amount that Al Hilal was … they could offer £80-100m.

I spoke with the manager. I said, ‘look, this is what I have. This is the offer I have on the table. I have to think about if the club says we want you to go because we want to get a different player. We need money to get more players or whatever.’ That was not the case from the club.

The manager said to me, ‘no we want more players to help you to become a better team so we don’t want you to go, because then if we bring some people and then we lose you, we’re still going to lose something’.

At the moment, no one spoke with me about anything. If someone told me, ‘in the summer, look, we’ll come again.’ No one told that to me.

I don’t think they [Al Hilal] were very happy for me to reject the offer. I accept that because the offer was very good in terms of salary. Everything was massive for me. It was a huge difference.

I feel good here. I want to achieve my dreams still, but obviously I can’t talk by the side of the club. I’ve seen a lot of news. I’ve seen a lot of people talking that I had an agreement to go already next season. If the club has done that agreement, it wasn’t made with me.

I haven’t spoken with anyone. My agent also knows how I work, so if he wants to talk to me, it will be after the World Cup. Because until then, I won’t speak to anyone.”

WOW.