This is Why Man City’s Silva Fears Being Compared With Ronaldo

Bernardo Silva does not fancy a showdown with his Portugal teammate Cristiano Ronaldo in the Champions League quarter-finals.

The little Manchester City wizard has been one of the Blues’ players of the season and manager Pep Guardiola recently referred to him as his country’s biggest star.

Bernardo Silva scores City's fifth goal against Schalke

Bernardo scored one of his side’s seven goals as City booked a quarter-final place in a mauling of Schalke on Tuesday night.

But 34-year-old Ronaldo stole some of their limelight with a hat-trick for Juventus as they stormed back from 2-0 down in the first leg to secure their place in Friday’s draw.

Guardiola is believed to have been referring to the fact that Ronaldo is currently taking a break from international football when he declared that Bernardo “is the biggest star already”.

The prospect of testing his manager’s theory does not appeal to Bernardo: “I wouldn’t like it very much to be honest. I know him, I know what he’s capable of and once again he proved it.

“I think people interpreted things a little different to what he (Guardiola) meant.

“Cristiano, what he has done in over the last 15 years in football is probably one of the best players ever in the history of football so no comparison to him.”

With Barcelona also big favourites to go through after drawing their first leg 0-0 in Lyon – and Bernardo is not too keen on facing the Catalan aces just yet, either.

“When you are playing in a competition like the Champions League you have to know that you can get drawn against these kind of teams, these kind of players,” he said.

“It is a good thing. It means you are playing the best competitions, the best games and we will see who we are playing against.

“Of course to play against Cristiano and Messi it is always complicated.”

The Blues’ seven-goal haul against Schalke took them to 139 for the season in all competitions – another five and they will be second only to Manuel Pellegrini’s team of 2013-14 in the English goalscoring records.

But Bernardo knocked back the idea that City always feel they will score, even though they have drawn a blank only three times this season – twice against Chelsea and one against Liverpool,

“The last three games in the Premier League were not easy games,” said Bernardo.

“We played against West Ham, we won 1-0, Bournemouth we won 1-0, so not always do we score lots of goals, sometimes it’s complicated because the teams defend very deep against us.

“Of course we try to be very offensive and create chances to score lots of goals.

“This is a team that plays offensive football. We try to press high, we try to have the control of the game to have the ball as much as possible, and when we lose the ball to recover as fast as possible.

“We try to score goals, and try not to concede and to prevent the counter attacks, of course especially here at home we’re a good team at scoring goals.”

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