Someone once told me that fear of heights is not really the fear of falling but the fear that the irrational urge to throw yourself over the edge will become irresistible. True in my experience
🚨 Bruno Fernandes on what he loves most about Kobbie Mainoo:
🗣️ Reporter: “Let me guess. His control? Whenever people talk about Mainoo, that’s usually the first thing.”
🗣️ Bruno: “Did you just call his control ‘just’?” [laughs]
🗣️ Reporter: “You know what I mean.”
🗣️ Bruno: “No, because that’s not ‘just’ anything. The ball respects Kobbie. Sometimes you give him a terrible pass and somehow he controls it like you’ve given him a good one.
But that’s not actually what I love most about him. It’s how much he learns from the midfielders around him.
Think about Kobbie before he spent all that time with Casemiro. The composure was there. The control was there. But that South American aggression wasn’t.
Then suddenly I’m watching Kobbie and Case throwing themselves into tackles, clearing balls and screaming at each other because they’ve won possession. [laughs]
I remember telling Kobbie, ‘Case is going to leave Manchester United one day, but I don’t think all of Case is leaving with him.’
Ask Harry. He started calling Kobbie the little Brazilian general. But the boy is English.
That’s when I understood it. Kobbie collects things from midfielders.
Now Youri is here and I’ve already warned him. I said, ‘Be careful what you show Kobbie every day because eventually you’ll see him doing it.’
It reminds me a little of Pogba at Juventus. Paul already had incredible talent, then you put him every day with Pirlo, Vidal, Marchisio… eventually pieces of those players enter your game. Even that Italian confidence Paul came back with. Some people called it arrogance, but midfielders sometimes need that.
Kobbie has had Casemiro. Now he has Youri. He’s clever enough to watch them and take what improves him without losing what made him Kobbie in the first place.
So I’ve warned Youri already.
If Kobbie starts making blind passes without looking in six months, we’re blaming him.”