Bernardo Silva is a special case. Pep Guardiola is not one for effusive praise of players but he gushes over his captain’s performances most weeks. Why? Simply because Bernardo is timeless; his display against Arsenal was transformative for Manchester City’s title chances.
The 31-year-old is of course an expert in this field. He, alongside a small handful of others that remain at City, know perfectly well the ins and outs of a title-winning campaign.
But this metronome of Manchester City, a six-time champion, is in scarce company when it comes to truly understanding the intricacies of becoming a Premier League winner over a whole campaign. Perhaps only Rodri and Erling Haaland (of those to start against Arsenal) can be categorised similarly.
Manchester City head coach Pep Guardiola pays homage to ‘special’ Bernardo Silva after they beat Arsenal 2-1
Bernardo has been there from the start of Guardiola’s reign and confirmed last week this will be his last season in Manchester. A poetic end might yet lay claim to one more title. It would be fitting for a player so intransient. Few have the class nor the compulsion to exceed every iteration of Guardiola’s City. Bernardo does.
His speciality is with the ball and yet what impressed most against Arsenal was the stuff he did without it. Rayan Cherki will get all the plaudits for setting the tone with a spectacular opener but if you watch the subtlety of the run that causes confusion for those trying to intercept the scorer, it’s Bernardo who makes it. Declan Rice is preoccupied.
Rayan Cherki gives Man City the lead in their Premier League clash with Arsenal
When Kai Havertz goes through 1v1 with Gianluigi Donnarumma, with the scores level, it’s Bernardo who leans on him to put him off balance. When Martin Odegaard is away, Bernardo tracks him. And when City were under the cosh late on it was the Portuguese playmaker who made a crucial clearing header, beating Viktor Gyokeres in the air.
The action prompted Haaland to liken him to Italian great Fabio Cannavaro.
Most of this work goes unnoticed by the untrained eye. Not Pep, though. “I just feel gratitude, if I talk a lot, one day I’ll cry,” the boss reflected in his press conference. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you for what you have done. Bernardo proves football starts here,” he added, pointing to his head.
The intelligence is what Guardiola, who once joked about his desire to field 11 Bernardo Silvas, adores. “Without him my nine years would be so, so different. He’s special.”
Understated players like Bernardo are seldom so unique in their reading of the game. The vision and complementary skill with which to execute any pass in the book is rare. Across this season only Matheus Nunes can boast a higher number of passes completed, while no Man City player beats his tally of attempted passes into the final third (583).
Gary Neville says Manchester City can smell the title after their crucial win over Arsenal, saying Bernardo Silva delivered an ‘above-and-beyond’ performance
But only by reimagining the function of a traditional central midfielder can one accurately analyse Bernardo’s role for City. He is key to every phase. A technician and a warrior. Out of possession he organises, bates the press, intercepts and tackles like a terrier. Overall he has covered 327km in distance this season, which is 40km – or a full marathon – further than next-best Haaland.
On the ball he’s closer than any to being as gifted as Kevin De Bruyne. And that is why, alongside the great Belgian, he will be the hardest of any to replace.
There is no replica for De Bruyne’s genius just like there is no duplicate of Bernardo. And yet the latter goes completely against the grain of the profile of new-age midfielders. He is not tall in stature nor physically imposing. Joking in a video with team-mate Ruben Dias just last week he stated: “I don’t do gym – that’s for the guys that don’t know how to play with the ball.”
Positionally, Bernardo is almost always spot on. Smartness over sprints (a metric he ranks 46th in among the league’s midfielders). But when the vantage point is two steps ahead, pace and brute force become dispensable assets. Haaland calls him “the smartest player he has ever played with”.
Erling Haaland thinks Bernardo Silva is the ‘smartest player’ he has ever played with
And so, to close the chapter on Bernardo’s Manchester City career this summer will mark another poignant shift. A sign that Guardiola’s end is surely also nigh. There is perhaps no player that better defines the Spaniard’s decade in charge.
But for now, his influence on City’s latest charge towards the title is being sharply felt. A player, as Gary Neville puts it, that just “grips a game”, much in the same way Paul Scholes did during Manchester United’s unimaginable era of success. The control, the dominance, the ability to speed up and slow down at will. That is Bernardo Silva.
452 games in to his unbeatable City career, he remains remarkably one-of-a-kind.
