The Bruno Fernandes Effect: How Manchester United Turned the Tables

It is not that Fred has suddenly become a good player. It is that he was never a bad player in the first place. Manchester’s squabbling twins did not try to sign him because of a few uncharacteristically good games in Ukraine; they were not misled by flawed scouting reports. He was not a glitch in the data. He just needed time, and the right structure around him, to flourish.

Fernandes, though, is different, something rarer still. His United career is still in its infancy, of course. He may yet burn brightly but briefly. Regardless, his impact has already been seismic. He has wrought some sort of alchemy on everything around him.

There is a soccer-specific explanation for that. He passes neatly, and crisply; he plays on the half-turn, always what Johan Cruyff used to describe as “facing the right way”; he wants, demands, the ball, and the responsibility for it.

United’s first goal was evidence of it: a free kick that he scooped, deftly and impudently, to Martial, whose finish squirmed under Ederson. “He is a risk taker,” Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the team’s manager, said. “He has courage, and he is brave enough to make mistakes. He has the X factor.”

He is just what United needed, in other words: a player who does not expect the worst.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/08/sports/soccer/manchester-united-city-derby.html