Rui Faria’s Missed Call: Manchester United's Chance on Bernardo Silva
Manchester United have spent the summer talking about change. New structures, new powerbrokers, a new era under Michael Carrick. Yet one story from the recent past cuts right through all the noise: United once had the chance to sign Bernardo Silva and let him slip away.
The recommendation came from inside the building.
Rui Faria, Jose Mourinho’s long-time lieutenant, has revealed that in 2017 he pushed hard for United to move for the then-22-year-old Portuguese playmaker. The club didn’t act. Manchester City did. The rest has shaped a decade of English football.
The One That Got Away
Faria followed Mourinho to Old Trafford in 2016, extending a partnership that had already taken in six clubs and 17 years, including two separate spells at Chelsea. Few people understand Mourinho’s methods or his eye for talent better than him.
Speaking to AS, Faria explained that he had identified Bernardo Silva as a player United should build around.
“Bernardo Silva is a fantastic player. I remember recommending him to Manchester United in 2017, when he was 22,” Faria said. “We tried, but it wasn’t possible, and he ended up at their city rivals. If he’s fit, he can be a game-changer for Real Madrid. He’s a player with tremendous technical ability, a great understanding of the game, and exceptional intelligence.”
United hesitated. City didn’t. Silva crossed to the blue side of Manchester and spent nine years bending the Premier League to his will.
Six league titles. A Champions League crown in 2023. Season after season of influence in Pep Guardiola’s most intricate, suffocating sides. All from a player Faria had wanted in red.
For United fans, it is a sliding-doors moment that stings.
Guardiola Gone, Bernardo Gone – and a New Landscape
This summer has ripped up familiar storylines across the Premier League. Manchester City are heading into the new campaign without Pep Guardiola and without Bernardo Silva. Rodri may yet follow them out of the door before the serious business starts.
The champions who once felt immovable are changing shape.
Across town, Old Trafford is bracing for its own reset. Carrick, preparing for his first full season in charge, is trying to close the gap on Arsenal and City after last year’s third-place finish. Recruitment, long United’s Achilles heel, will define how realistic that ambition is.
It raises an uncomfortable question for the new regime: when a voice as trusted as Faria’s once urged the club to move for a generational midfielder and was ignored, what will they do differently now?
Mourinho, Madrid and a Reunion Years in the Making
Faria’s reflections came as he assessed another twist in Mourinho’s career: a return to Real Madrid. In his view, Mourinho should never have left the Bernabeu after his original spell from 2010 to 2013.
This time, the Portuguese coach arrives in Spain with a player he has admired for years finally at his disposal.
After his medal-laden stay at City, Bernardo Silva left the Etihad this summer and joined Real Madrid as a free agent. Mourinho, who once watched him escape to United’s fiercest domestic rival, now has the chance to build around him in La Liga.
Mourinho and Silva. Real Madrid and a rebuilt Barcelona on the horizon. A league title to chase. The combination feels tailor-made for drama.
Faria’s Own Path
While Mourinho has continued to prowl the touchlines of Europe’s giants, Faria stepped away from the front line at the end of the 2017/18 season. He resigned from his role at United after exactly two years, drawing a line under nearly two decades at Mourinho’s side to spend more time with his family.
A brief spell as manager of Al-Duhail in Saudi Arabia followed in 2019, but Faria has since moved into a different vantage point on the game. He now works as a technical observer for UEFA, filing detailed reports on Champions League matches and tracking the evolution of elite football from the analyst’s chair.
From there, he has watched Bernardo Silva become one of the defining players of his generation. He has also watched United search, and search again, for the kind of intelligence and technical security he once urged them to buy.
United’s New Decisions
As Ineos reshape the club’s football operation and Carrick looks to sharpen a squad still short of the finished article, the lesson from 2017 hangs in the air.
When the right player is identified, hesitation is a luxury United can no longer afford.
Bernardo Silva will now weave his patterns at the Bernabeu, trying to drag La Liga back into Madrid’s hands alongside a coach who has finally caught up with his long-time target.
United, watching from afar, are left with a harsher task: making sure the next Bernardo Silva they’re offered doesn’t end up across the city, or across the continent, rewriting someone else’s history.
