How Bernardo Silva personifies Pep Guardiola's safety-first approach at Manchester City

New York Times

23-04-2025

Pep Guardiola is going to try to get Manchester City into the Champions League his way, and he is going to do it using his players.
He is going to do it with the ones who 'have experience, that maybe know better the older patterns', as he explained recently.
He means Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan, Bernardo Silva and even Mateo Kovacic, who has the upper hand over Nico Gonzalez because he signed two years ago, not two months ago.
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It does not sound like a controversial plan when put like that, but it has not been entirely popular among the City fanbase of late, partly because those four have probably struggled more than anybody else across the season.
Those struggles and the feeling that age has caught up with them — Guardiola did say City are 'an old team' in January — has led to them becoming known, generally affectionately but also with a tinge of frustration, as 'uncs'.
According to Urban Dictionary, Unc status 'refers to the slang term, unc, which is short for uncle. You typically refer to someone as unc when they are the brother of one's father or mother, or more commonly when they are an older male mentor/role model. Achieving 'unc status' essentially means that you have fulfilled at least one of those two criteria within someone else's life'.
Fundamentally there is a misunderstanding — or at least dislike — for what Guardiola is trying to achieve in these final games. He has been criticised for not finding a solution to City's struggles earlier this season but, late though it may be, this is actually it.
Essentially, he has gone back to the tried and tested safety-first approach. You know, the one that helped them win the treble. Look back at their Champions League away fixtures in the 2022-23 season: each of them, apart from the first at Sevilla, was basically an exercise in sterile possession, geared towards not losing.
The only difference now is that City are not quite so accomplished with the ball and not so stable without it, so Guardiola wants to fill his team with even more of his passers. His warhorses. Those who understand exactly what he wants.
The more doubts Guardiola has, the more men he puts in the middle of the pitch.
This is the thing: if people are not on board with the gameplan, they are not really going to be on board with those asked to carry it out, especially when there are new guys (Nico Gonzalez) or more exciting guys (Jeremy Doku, Savinho, James McAtee) being left out instead.
But watching Bernardo during City's victory against Aston Villa, a game won in stoppage time at the end, was a reminder that he is basically another Guardiola on the pitch. So is Gundogan in terms of the patient gameplan, but this was a night when Bernardo shone brightest, even without considering his slightly fortunate opening goal.
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He was the glue that held the whole performance together. Had City not scored at the death through Matheus Nunes, neither the team performance nor Bernardo would have garnered much praise, but City pretty much achieved what they set out to do even at 1-1: they stifled Villa, they stayed solid.
Not many teams have managed that of late, and City have not done it to many teams this season, either. But they did on Tuesday because of the team Guardiola picked, not in spite of it.
And Bernardo was central to it all. Only Josko Gvardiol, the centre-back charged with passing the ball out from the back, had more touches than him.
Many of the 30-year-old's best games for City have been characterised by his sheer effort levels, the distance he has run and the amount of tackles he has made.
They are probably cherished so much because of our British way of viewing football, but there have been plenty of more intelligent performances where he has basically dictated the entire game because of what he does with the ball: he gets on it at the back, in midfield and up front. He gets on it and he keeps it.
Guardiola usually calls for 'one thousand million passes' in games like this, a tactic that goes hand-in-hand with his more conservative performances, and that is complemented to perfection by players like Bernardo taking one thousand million touches.
When this team is broken up, when Guardiola leaves and this period is reflected upon, it will be impossible to explain what they have done without discussing Bernardo's role.
As much as the running and the tackles and the dribbles, he, and Gundogan, know not to expose the team by chucking the ball forwards, leaving space behind. This season has not been vintage for either of them, and even at their best there would obviously be times when they lose the ball through poor execution, but Guardiola loves them because, more often than not, they make the right decisions. And more often than not, if they make the right decisions, the team does what it is supposed to do.
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Bernardo has come in for more criticism, sometimes much worse, than the others, but when you see his 'cardio sessions' or 'backwards passes' being criticised online, you know there is no basis to it.
'I don't forget Bernardo, what he has done for us,' Guardiola said late on Tuesday night. 'This season, especially this season.
'I don't forget November, December, January, February, March. We didn't win one single game but he was there every single time, running 30 kilometres every time, playing different positions, and there was a moment when he was empty; mentally, and after not winning games he was tired. But Bernardo, in important games, has an incredibly huge personality. He's a player, for me, who is on another level.'
Inevitably, because it is all tied together, Guardiola's analysis of Bernardo's performance against Villa circled back to his understanding of the plan. The plan is patience, and few understand it better than Bernardo.
'Today for the game, like Kova — Kova today was brilliant as well,' Guardiola continued. 'All the players, the commitment. Maybe we miss a little bit some quality, we didn't create much, but it's not easy against Aston Villa because they defend low block, five or six players at the back and it's not easy.
'It's a question of being patient and today Kova and Bernardo helped us to read that.'
Few understand Guardiola's game plans full stop, but Bernardo is one who knows exactly what is called for. Guardiola will never forget that and neither should anybody else.