Bruno Fernandes: Roy Keane Twisted My Words. They Offered Me £200M, I Said No.

Steven Bartlett (0:00)

Something we think about a lot in The Diary Of A CEO is distribution, because we could have the most interesting guests in the world and the most thought-provoking conversation, but if nobody can find us, none of that really matters. And this logic applies to pretty much any business. Whatever you're selling, however good it is, distribution often is the determining factor of whether you win or whether you lose. And this is why it's interesting to me that so many vacation rental owners are essentially invisible to a huge chunk of their potential market without even realizing it. Let me explain. booking.com is one of the most downloaded travel apps in the world. And since 2010, it's helped over 1.8 billion vacation rental guests find places to stay. That's a huge pool of travelers actively looking for places to stay. So if you've got a vacation rental that isn't on booking.com, that means you're missing out on being seen by millions of travelers already searching their platform. Getting listed takes 15 minutes. And nearly half of new hosts get their first booking within a week. If you need that kind of global reach for your listing, I assume you do, then head to booking.com to start your listing today.

Bruno Fernandes (1:01)

In the football career, you go through a lot of ups and downs and a lot of difficult moments. And let's say the ones that suffered the most are family.

They see your good moments, your bad moments, your good side, your bad side also. But they always start by you.

Steven Bartlett (1:26)

Your time at Manchester United's been a bit of a rollercoaster like this. And so on that day when you get a big offer to leave Manchester United for a contract that was worth reportedly 200 million, why didn't you go?

SPEAKER_3 (1:39)

It's captain fantastic!

Steven Bartlett (1:41)

Manchester United's captain, Bruno Fernandes, has arguably become their greatest player in the post-Ferguson era. There isn't a single player in the Premier League who has more assists since his arrival. He's won more Club Player Of The Year Awards than Ronaldo, and only five players have scored more than his 70 league goals. So I'm at the Manchester United training ground to ask him the questions the footballing world wants to know, including, recently Roy Keane criticised your mentality based on a quote he claimed you said. How do you respond to that?

Bruno Fernandes (2:16)

He kept criticising me, killing me, saying that I'm not good enough, that I'm not a good captain, that I'm not a good player for the club. It's OK, I don't mind. What I don't like is when people lie about things. I even ask Ole's number to have a word with him.

Steven Bartlett (2:28)

Did you speak to him?

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Bruno, to understand somebody, I always think you have to start with where they started and the early context that they grew up in. And we were just talking before we started recording about Porto. I'm on a journey to understand why you are the way that you are, because you're such an anomaly on the pitch and your career. When I track the journey of where you've come from and how you continually were promoted and pushed forward at a very young age, it's clear to me that your early context, your early upbringing and whatever it was that was present at that age has shaped you in some very, very important way. What is the earliest thing I need to understand about where you came from and that environment?

Bruno Fernandes (3:44)

For me, it's all about family, it's about taking care of other people and I think to succeed not just in sports but in life, you need to be very careful of your surroundings. I think the values of my family, the values of my parents were what make me the person and the player I am today.

Steven Bartlett (4:04)

The older I've gotten, I'm now 33, so I think I'm two years older than you, the more I've realized actually with time what I learned from my parents and the values that my dad in particular gave me. He never, for a lot of the things, it's not something he ever said to me, it's like modeling what he did. So seeing how he behaved, what's that for you?