Bernardo Silva has opened up on the defensive principles that guide him and make him such an all-round player, able to operate in multiple positions, suggesting his formative years at Benfica were decisive.
Silva starred for Manchester City in their 3-0 Champions League quarter-final first-leg win over Bayern Munich at the Etihad Stadium on Tuesday, scoring the second goal with a header and impressing with his quick feet and sharp turns on the ball. But as Silva considers next Wednesday’s return in Bavaria, mindful that the job is only half done, plenty of cautionary tales in his mind, he can take as much heart from his work out of possession on a famous night.
Pep Guardiola and several City players spoke about their pride in the clean sheet, the collective defensive effort, particularly in terms of pressing, positioning and the reading of Bayern’s threat. Silva was key to it, his diminutive frame no barrier when set against his intelligence, non-stop movement off the right wing and ability to close down passing lanes.
“I believe that it doesn’t matter which position you play, in football everyone attacks and everyone defends so in different positions you need to defend in different ways,” he said. “Even if you’re a striker or a winger or an offensive midfielder you need to do your work properly to help the team defensively.
“I’ve worked a lot on that in my career, in my academy at Benfica. My managers when I was younger … they demanded a lot from me defensively so I am built this way.”
Silva will always remember how, in the summer of 2013 as he attempted to break into the first-team at Benfica, the manager at the time, Jorge Jesus, played him at left-back throughout pre-season and in friendly matches. Jesus did not believe in Silva, feeling he was too small to make it in the professional game and his use of him there was an unkind way of getting the point across.
In the 2013-14 season, Jesus played Silva once in the league – as an 82nd-minute substitute in the final match at Porto – and he would tell him that he saw him as a B-team player for the following campaign. Silva left for Monaco before it started, which was where he ignited his career.
There was a kind of circularity when Guardiola used Silva at left-back against Aston Villa and Arsenal in February after João Cancelo’s departure to Bayern, but this was no slight. Rather it was a recognition of Silva’s selflessness and tenacity, a celebration of his versatility that reinforced the answers he gave to El País in 2019 when asked about the importance of physicality.
“When Guardiola’s Barcelona era began, seeing players like Messi, Iniesta and Xavi gave me more strength to continue,” he said. “Barcelona were the best team in the world and three of their best players were almost smaller than me. The most important thing in football is the head, the decisions the player makes.”
It is hard to classify Silva’s best position. Is it as a No 10, a box-to-box role or deeper in midfield where he can build the play? He is certainly not doing too badly as a roaming right midfielder. What is uppermost in Silva’s thoughts is finishing the task against Bayern – after Saturday’s visit of Leicester in the Premier League. Game by game is the mantra of every City player as the external chatter turns to the prospect of the treble. They face Sheffield United in the semi-finals of the FA Cup on Saturday week.
City have been bitten too many times in the Champions League to get ahead of themselves, with last season’s semi-final exit against Real Madrid feeling like the deepest imprint. They held a two-goal aggregate lead on four separate occasions, the last of them as they entered the 90th minute of the second leg only to be reeled in.
“It’s not over against Bayern,” Silva said. “We’ve had a lot of experience that shows us what happens in the first game doesn’t matter. Against Real Madrid, everybody said it was over and then in the last five minutes everything changed.
“We’re one step closer to where we want to be, but we know that one game in this competition is not enough. If you blink for a second, you are out.”
