First Since Rooney. Bruno Wins FWA Footballer Of The Year

The Football Writers' Association handed Bruno Fernandes the 2025/26 Footballer of the Year on Friday. He's the first United player to win it since 2010, and he isn't done yet.

The last United player to win the Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year was Wayne Rooney in 2009/10. Sir Alex Ferguson was the manager. Cristiano Ronaldo was at Real Madrid. Bruno Fernandes was 16 years old and playing youth football for Boavista in Porto.

Sixteen years later, in a season that began with the team in disarray and ends with Champions League football secured, the captain has the same award. He is the ninth different United player to win it, the tenth time a United player has taken it home. Cristiano Ronaldo is the only two-time winner.

That list is the point.

Johnny Carey. Bobby Charlton. George Best. Eric Cantona. Roy Keane. Teddy Sheringham. Cristiano Ronaldo. Wayne Rooney. Bruno Fernandes.

With one or two additions to that group, you have the spine of the club's modern history. Whatever else is going to be said about this season, the manager change, the Liverpool collapse, the Carrick rescue mission, the Champions League rescue mission, it will also be said that the captain put together one of the finest individual seasons of any United player in the post-Ferguson era.

He won 45 percent of the press vote and beat Declan Rice by 28 ballots. Erling Haaland came third. No other United player received a vote.

The numbers

Eight goals and 19 assists in the Premier League. The 19 assists are one off the all-time single-season record, currently shared by Thierry Henry (2002/03) and Kevin De Bruyne (2019/20). United have three games left.

Per Opta, Bruno has created 120 chances this season. That is already his highest total in any of his six full Premier League campaigns at the club. He has topped the Premier League's chance-creation charts in all but one of his previous five complete seasons. According to Adam Bate of Sky Sports, he has made more chipped passes than any other player in the league this year and attempted fifty percent more through-balls. Since mid-January, no Premier League player has been involved in more goals.

The chance creation isn't volume. It is invention.

The Sesko stoppage-time winner against Fulham, set up by a dummy that erased Calvin Bassey out on the right wing. The first-time pass through the seam to Cunha against Aston Villa. The breakaway against Manchester City and the disguised pass to Mbeumo when the eyes suggested he would spread the ball wide to Amad. The angled through-ball to Sesko at Turf Moor. These are not balls played because the run was on. These are balls that demanded the run.

That is the difference between a creator and an inventor. Bruno is in the second category this season.

The journey through it

He won this award in a season that started with the team outside the European places and the manager under public review. Ruben Amorim was sacked in January with Champions League qualification in doubt. Under his compatriot, Bruno was often deployed in a deeper role and still managed to impress from there. That is itself the case for the award.

Carrick moved him back to his preferred number 10 position. Everything that has happened since January, the run to third, the win against Liverpool, the assist tally that ended up one off the all-time record, came from there.

Carrick's reaction quote on Sky was about exactly that. "I think giving Bruno the platform to go and perform. Like all the players, I think we are trying to create the structure and a team set-up, really, to try to bring out the best of everyone within that."

The Sky interview on Bruno's reaction to the award is worth quoting in full because the captain's framing is interesting. He has spent the spring publicly turning down a Saudi Arabia move that would have made him one of the highest-paid footballers on the planet. He told Gary Neville last week that he stayed because he hasn't won the things he wants to win at this club yet. The press has been watching that whole arc closely. The press handed him the award. There is a coherence to that.

The vote was contested

This is worth being honest about. Two prominent journalists came out on the record on Friday afternoon explaining that they voted for Declan Rice and felt Rice should have won.

Henry Winter of The Times wrote on X: "Congratulations to Bruno Fernandes voted Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year. Superb for Manchester United in a tough season. I voted Declan Rice for driving Arsenal to within touching distance now of the Premier League and Champions League." When pressed on the choice, Winter explained: "because it's about glory. it's about hunting down trophies. And Rice, given the timing of the vote, has sights on two."

Charles Watts, who covers Arsenal, wrote that if the award were a Premier League award, there would be few arguments against Bruno, but that the FWA award has historically gone to players hunting trophies. Rice, he noted, has appeared in 35 wins this season, more than Bruno's total appearances of 34.

Both points are reasonable. Both points were also outvoted. Bruno took 45 percent. Rice was 28 ballots behind.

The Winter framing has an honest answer to it: the award is "Footballer of the Year." Not "trophy contender of the year." If the criterion is who has been the best footballer in the country across the season, the press voted that it was Bruno. The vote total, even with Rice and Haaland on title-and-Champions-League runs, says the case was made.

What it means going into Saturday

He goes to the Stadium of Light on 19 Premier League assists, with three games left, with Sunderland having conceded ten goals across their last three games, and with the press of the entire country having just confirmed in writing that he has been the best footballer in the league this year.

He does not need motivation. He has never needed motivation. The award is a recognition of what has already happened, not a starting gun for what comes next. But the symmetry would be hard to miss: the Footballer of the Year breaking the all-time single-season assist record in the same week he wins the award.

One assist puts him level with Henry and De Bruyne. Two puts him alone.

Three games to do it.

The rest

The PFA Players' Player of the Year vote is decided by other professional players and is announced shortly. Player of the Season for the Premier League is decided by a public-and-press hybrid and is announced after that. The trend of the last three seasons has been that whoever wins one of the three big individual awards typically wins all three: Haaland in 2022/23, Foden in 2023/24, Salah in 2024/25.

Bruno Fernandes has the first one in the cabinet.

The team-mate quote of the week belongs to Cunha, on Sky, before the vote was tallied: "I feel like he deserves so much. He helps everyone. He is a beautiful captain for the club. He passed through hard moments and he deserves to have these beautiful moments also. What a player, what a guy. He deserves the Player of the Year."

The Football Writers' Association agreed.

Old Trafford has been waiting sixteen years for this one. Saturday morning at the Stadium of Light, it gets to watch its captain chase the next thing.