My Former Coach Tipped Me To Be A Great CB – Bruno Fernandes

Manchester United midfielder, Bruno Fernandes has come out to say that he was once told that he can only excel as a centre-half.

He recently revealed that he played a central defender for a while when he started playing football, but he did not really fancy the position.

According to him, everyone kept saying he was a good defender because of how covered his teammates at the back, but his mind was clearly elsewhere.

He added that after moving from CB to being used as a striker, he eventually settled for the midfield role he thrives in now.

His words, “I played central defender for the most part when I started playing football, either central defence or right-back,”

“I was really good, I had a coach who said to me, ‘If you want to be a top player, you will need to play as a central defender. If you want to be a good player, you will be a midfielder’.

“I think he was wrong but, maybe as a central defender, I could be much better, I don’t know! At the time I didn’t like to play there, but everyone was saying I was a good defender, they said I was smart, that I covered the sides.”

“The coach looked at the list of players, and because some were on vacation he said, ‘Oh we have no strikers’ and I said ‘I’m a striker!’ He said, ‘I thought you were a central defender’ and I said, ‘No, I don’t play there anymore, I’m a striker!’

“So he gave me one try-out in training, I scored twice and he said ‘OK, you can play a striker!’ He played me as striker in one game, then, in the second game, I was like a fake nine with two strikers, and after that I moved back to number 10 and number eight.”

On his personal life. “I grew up with my brother who is five years older, and so I grew up playing with him and with his friends,”

“Most of the time, I wouldn’t play because he didn’t want me to play with his friends – I don’t know if he was afraid that I was too good for them!

“I was a difficult boy at the time because I always wanted to play with the older ones and the problem was I didn’t want to just play, I wanted to be the best out of all of them. And if I need to do a nutmeg on someone, I will do it – I don’t care.

“And at that point, when you play with older guys, they are mad when they see a little boy do that, everyone starts shouting and laughing at them saying ‘Hey, you took a ‘meg from a little boy!’

“And then someone can come for you and kick you… so I think sometimes my brother was afraid of this and other times he knew I was good enough to play against them, and so he just doesn’t want problems!”