SomeRandomPerson
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Rory Smith of the New York Times has written a piece essentially pondering the same question most of this forum has for months: 'Bruno Fernandes is so good. How did Manchester United manage to sign him uncontested?'.
I think it's a really interesting piece and I recommend reading the whole thing, though I'll add some bits I found particularly interesting -
On early promise at the Boavista academy:
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I think it's a really interesting piece and I recommend reading the whole thing, though I'll add some bits I found particularly interesting -
On early promise at the Boavista academy:
On how Fernandes ended up at Boavista instead of Porto, Sporting or Benfica:“The way he is now is the way he always was,” Martelinho said, casting his mind back to the two years he spent working with Fernandes in the academy at Boavista. “He always played with a lot of ambition, always on the front foot, never playing a pass backward, always trying to get into the penalty area. He needed more experience, but everything you see now was there then.”
On how he ended up at Novara in Serie B:Fernandes had the chance to sign for at least one of them. Born in Maia, not far from Porto, he had been spotted by both Porto and Boavista while playing in a youth tournament. Both offered him a place in their academy. He chose Boavista, apparently, because it volunteered to send a minibus to take him to training, and neither of his parents could drive.
It is a version of the story that his former coach Martelinho, for one, disputes. “I think he believed he could get into the first team more easily at Boavista,” he said. “I made the same choice when I was a player, and for the same reason. It is a smaller club, so it is easier to play.”
When a Portuguese agent named Miguel Pinho got in touch with Giaretta in 2012 to recommend a teenage midfielder at Boavista, he might easily have disregarded it. His job involved tracking hundreds of players across much of Europe. He had never heard of Pinho, and he had never heard of Bruno Fernandes.
Bruno always had great mentality:On the phone, Pinho seemed a “serious” sort of person, Giaretta said, so he did not dismiss the idea as nothing more than an agent’s pitch. He traveled to the north of Portugal to watch the 17-year-old Fernandes in an academy game.
Bruno always had great mentality Redux ft. Francesco Guidolin (manager at Udinese when they signed Bruno):“My first impression was good, but not exceptional,” Giaretta said. “You could see the technical quality. His decision-making was better than average. He was light on his feet. But he wasn’t by far the best player on the pitch or anything.” Meeting Fernandes swayed him.
“You could see, straightaway, that you were in front of a grown-up,” he said. Giaretta decided to recommend that Novara move to sign the teenager.
Thoughts? On the question of football failing to recognize talent if it is in the wrong place, do you think big clubs are often too snobbish in how they recruit talent? Is this forum too easily dismissive of talent in 'non-traditional' places? Do please read the whole piece, even if it means clicking on to the Fake News, Failing New York TimesGuidolin had not seen much of Fernandes at Novara. When Fernandes arrived at Udinese, Guidolin was “curious” to see what this teenager with the unusual career path was like. “We went into training camp before the season,” Guidolin said. “Playing in Serie B and playing in Serie A are different things, but straightaway you could see that he was ready.”
Indeed, Guidolin felt that, perhaps, Fernandes’s early exposure to senior soccer — even at a lower level — had been in his interest. “A year in Serie B is a more complete experience than arriving straight from the youth system,” he said of players who move to Italy. “You could see that he had more certainty, took more responsibility, than most players his age.”