Bruno Fernandes rejecting Saudi Arabia is good news – and not just for Manchester United

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It’s easy to get annoyed at Bruno Fernandes.

As an on-pitch presence, he’s not especially likeable. His face seems permanently set to ‘complaint’ mode. He nags at referees. There was that undignified episode when Manchester United lost 7-0 to Liverpool a couple of years ago and he essentially threw a tantrum on the pitch.

But, as much as anything, that just illustrates something we all know: that on-pitch manners do not necessarily maketh the man. You hear plenty of stories about Bruno being a good guy, which at the very least balances the apparent petulance, most notably his attempt to pay for United staff to attend the FA Cup final after their free travel and accommodation were nixed as part of Big Jim Ratcliffe’s cost-cutting drive.

He also tends to be the one who ‘fronts up’ to the media after United defeats, when most of the time he’s the least of their problems. That might feel minor, but doing it means one of his younger, more junior, probably struggling team-mates doesn’t have to.

Fernandes currently plays for a particularly bleak type of football institution: one that’s rich and high profile, and thus commands a lot of attention, but one that can’t win games, and is run by people who seem intent on flushing any goodwill they might have down the toilet through redundancies, price rises, cutting charitable grants and whatever else they have planned in the name of austerity.

This is a club that has been carried on the pitch by their best player and captain for longer than he probably cares to remember, and one that you have little confidence is going to turn things around any time soon.

In short, you wouldn’t blame Fernandes for desperately grabbing at any plausible life raft that happens to float past.

Which brings us to his decision to turn down Al Hilal this week.

“It would have been an easy move,” Fernandes said at a Portugal press conference on Monday evening.

“I had Ruben Neves and Joao Cancelo there, two people I have a great friendship with. But I want to stay at the highest level, play in big competitions, because I still feel capable. I want to keep being happy, I’m still very passionate about this sport, and I’m happy with my decision.”

Fernandes was reportedly offered a contract that would have more than doubled his already significant wages to move to Saudi Arabia, with Al Hilal also apparently prepared to pay a £80million ($108m) transfer fee to extract him.

Most United fans will naturally be delighted. Not only do they keep their best player, but they will be protected from the dispiriting prospect of their club probably frittering away a crucial windfall; of all the clubs you would trust to cash in on their star man and use the money to responsibly beef up their squad, United are at the bottom of the list.

But the rest of us in Britain, Europe, the non-Saudi world, should be pleased, too.

It is, on the most basic level, refreshing to see someone have the conviction to turn down that amount of money. I can’t confidently say that I would. If you can, then fair play to you.

Joao Cancelo joined Al Hilal last summer (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)

Fernandes’ representatives met with Al Hilal, so we can assume that he didn’t turn the offer down on moral grounds, otherwise he might not have even entertained it. It’s also true that it’s easier to reject that kind of approach when you already earn £250,000-a-week at one of the world’s biggest clubs. Fernandes is not exactly hard up.

But it’s still pleasing that a player has not signed up to the Saudi project; someone of standing has rejected being a representative of the ultimate purpose of their move into sport, whether you call it sportswashing, soft power or something less charitable.

The players that have agreed to move to the Saudi Pro League so far have generally fallen into three categories: ageing legends in decline, like Cristiano Ronaldo or Sadio Mane; excellent-but-not-quite-elite types in roughly their peak years, like Ruben Neves, Ivan Toney or Aleksandar Mitrovic; and relative journeymen, such as your Daniel Podences or Georges-Kevin N’Koudous.

What they haven’t really yet managed to snag is a genuinely elite player at the peak of his powers from one of the elite clubs; a player who could probably slot happily into most top European teams and who represents a legitimate loss to one of the ‘legacy’ leagues.

You could argue Karim Benzema (who was the reigning Ballon d’Or holder when he joined Al Ittihad) or Riyad Mahrez (fresh from Manchester City’s treble-winning season) fit into this category, but they were 35 and 32 respectively when they made their moves. Fernandes is 30, but still performing as if in his prime, so would probably have been the SPL’s biggest coup from a purely football perspective, if not a PR one.

As it is, one of the Premier League’s best players is staying in the Premier League, and will continue playing at a level of competition that befits his ability. Whether it’s for that reason, or a sign that not everybody can be bought, or that not everyone can be persuaded to represent state project — take your pick — this should be celebrated.

This is all said with the caveat that Fernandes is staying… for now. We have been in this position before, where someone turns down a move to Saudi Arabia initially, only to reconsider. Steven Gerrard, who rejected an offer to become Al Ettifaq manager in June 2023 then joined them the following month, springs to mind. This article might look pretty silly if Fernandes flip-flops. He also isn’t necessarily staying at United: should a competent European team make him and United an attractive offer, he may still leave.

We also shouldn’t pretend he’s a saint who is sticking around purely for altruistic reasons, for the history of a proud football club that he simply can’t abandon. He has made this decision for essentially the same reason that all of those players who have moved to Saudi: because it is in the best interests of him and his family. If a better alternative presents itself, he will probably take it, and rightly so.

But for now, Bruno Fernandes is not moving to Saudi Arabia, and we should welcome that fact.

(Top photo: Bruno Fernandes with Manchester United in Kuala Lumpur; by Annice Lyn/Manchester United via Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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