Bernardo Silva sends damning message to Manchester City squad to raise standards | OneFootball

Manchester City captain Bernardo Silva has sent a strong message to his teammates to hold themselves to the highest standards as they embark upon the 2025-26 campaign.

Silva has been appointed club captain by manager Pep Guardiola after the departures of former skipper Kyle Walker and Kevin De Bruyne this summer, with the Manchester City boss selecting the captain for the first time during his tenure at the Etihad Stadium.

For a multitude of reasons, City fell short of their incredible standards they have set for themselves over the years last season – recording a third-place Premier League finish with 71 points, crashing out of the UEFA Champions League at the Round of 16 stage and losing the FA Cup final to Crystal Palace.

Silva has 12 months left on his Manchester City contract but after being given the armband by Guardiola, the 30-year-old has led the charge to get his side back playing like they used to by raising their standards on and off the pitch day-in and day-out ahead of this weekend’s Premier League opener away at Wolves.

“I’m a bad loser. I hate losing. I played 12 years at Benfica, which is a big club in Portugal. The way that they educate us, you’re not happy if you lose,” Silva said, as quoted by Simon Bajkowski of the Manchester Evening News.

“Maybe it’s not a very nice thing to watch from the outside, but I like to think that you need players to feel bad when you lose game after game. You need to feel bad with yourself, you need to feel bad about the performance and that’s the way I deal with it.

“We tasted defeat and you know when you taste success and you taste defeat, you know that it feels much better. We didn’t enjoy last season. We didn’t enjoy it. It was very frustrating, very painful for I would say almost all of us and we’re back with that hunger to go again for titles.”

With De Bruyne and Walker no longer at the club, Silva will be leaning on Ballon d’Or holder Rodri, compatriot Ruben Dias as well as talisman Erling Haaland – who collectively form Manchester City’s leadership group for the 2025-26 campaign.

The Portugal international added: “I think the biggest task, not just my task but of all the captains, is to create the right balance in the dressing room.

“I would say the right balance is good behaviour and respect in terms of arriving on time, in terms of performing well in training sessions, giving your best for the club.

“Don’t take any shortcuts, don’t try to cheat your job. But at the same time, balance this respect that we have for each other with competition, competing for your place, competing for your position.

“I want to play all games and the guy that’s in my position, he also wants to play all games. I think that kind of balance of having a lot of respect and having a great relationship in the dressing room but at the same time competing against each other, I think puts us a step closer to fighting back.”

Reflecting on last season’s frailties and City’s poor record with injuries, Silva said: “In my opinion, the stability of a team and how well a team defends builds the rock necessary to then win games and win titles.

“I have a game in mind, I think it was Tottenham on the Carabao Cup when we got our fourth centre-back’s injury, I think. John (Stones), Manuel (Akanji), Ruben (Dias) and (Nathan) Ake, in one game they’re all out. That’s when things started going down.

“Obviously not just that because a team with our experience, with our quality, even with that cannot go down as easily as we did. So there’s a lot of, I would say, guilt. I’m not sure if that’s the proper word but guilt in all the rest of the players, in the manager, in everyone, on not doing better to overcome this situation.

“But we learned a lot of things, as I said. I learned a lot of things. You definitely learn who you can go to war with and who you can’t in those moments. Hopefully it was a very good lesson for us.”