Journalist says Man City player ‘is the star’ for Portugal not Cristiano Ronaldo

Alex Goncalves has made a big revelation on the Blue Moon Podcast about the Bernardo Silva’s reputation in the national team.

The Manchester City star was named in Portugal’s World Cup squad for Qatar and is expected to start in their opening group game with Ghana on Thursday, November 24.

Goncalves believes Silva “is the star” of Portugal over Cristiano Ronaldo now and is more important to their success than the Manchester United forward who captains the side.

Goncalves said on the 2022 World Cup Special: “What’s guaranteed is he will definitely be playing. I think you could say he’s probably actually the star of the Portuguese national team right now ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo and everybody else.”

Ronaldo is the leading scorer in the history of men’s international football, with 117 goals in 191 games, but his goal-scoring form has dipped lately.

He has scored in only one of Portugal’s 10 games over the last year, netting a brace against Switzerland in the Nations League in June, and only three times this season for Manchester United where he has struggled to get into the starting line-up.

But he retains the support of his Portugal teammates despite a fall in his goal-scoring form and the recent problems. Bernardo Silva backs Ronaldo to take desert by storm.

“The reality is when you’ve got a player like Cristiano, it’s natural that sometimes you play for him because he can win you the game in the final minutes,” Silva told the Fifa website.

“When you have these kinds of players on your side, you have to take advantage of them, although I agree you can’t become over-dependent on them as this can disrupt the team dynamics,” he said. “But, if we get it right, having Cristiano in our team will be a powerful weapon.”

Portugal have never won the World Cup with third place in 1966 their best finish.

“Winning the World Cup is obviously a dream we all share but we’ll take it one game at a time because that’s the best way to win any championship,” Silva said.

“Our goal is to be champions but we must take it slowly, game by game. The focus is on our next training session, the match, recovery, training again, the next game and so on. Like that, we’ll get there.”