Fernandes feels the love as debut season draws to a close

There’s no getting away from it, this was a slog of a season. For the players, for the staff, for the three managers who tried to arrest Saints’ slide, and for the loyal fans who followed their team more in hope than expectation as the brutality of the Premier League took hold of its freshmen, subjecting the Championship’s promoted trio to a swift return whilst daring some of its recent victims to try their luck once more.

That’s not to say there haven’t been success stories along the way, like the emergence of Tyler Dibling as the next star from Saints’ proud Academy. James Bree won’t forget the run to the quarter-finals of the Carabao Cup thanks to his spectacular late goals against Cardiff and Stoke either side of his winning penalty at Goodison Park in its final season. Lesley Ugochukwu’s stoppage-time equaliser at West Ham and Saints’ backs-to-the-wall clean sheet against Manchester City stood for more than just solitary points on the board; they were acts of defiance in the face of an already lost cause.

If there is one man that has provided a constant source of encouragement to those who have travelled up and down the country wondering why they weren’t treated to more moments like Bree’s and Ugochukwu’s, or Paul Onuachu’s late winner at Ipswich, it has been Mateus Fernandes.

Fernandes arrived from Portugal last summer as a 20-year-old. His birthday is in July, so he is still yet to turn 21, but his growth on and off the field defy his unchanged age.

At last week’s end-of-season awards, the all-action midfielder helped himself to a deserved double: the Fans’ Player of the Year and the Daily Echo accolade, also a supporter vote, underlying Fernandes’s popularity with those who first sang his name in the autumn and haven’t stopped since.

“It’s not the most important for me,” he said, modestly, upon receiving the club award. “The team, every time, comes first, but I am 20 years old so I come to a new country and everything is new for me – new language, new weather, new teammates – so I’m very proud of myself and I think my town is very proud of me too.”

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It’s typical of Fernandes to mention home – that’s where he’ll spend his summer downtime, back on the Algarve with his family, regular visitors to St Mary’s, and his childhood friends with whom he remains close. He still watches his boyhood team, Sporting, whenever he can.

Former Saints skipper José Fonte, who has lived Fernandes’s ultimate ambition of winning a major trophy for Portugal, had already left Sporting to further his own career before Fernandes was even born, back in 2004.

There is still time for the Under-21 international to see Saints hit the heights of the Fonte era a decade before him, and everything his compatriot told him about the club has still rung true.

“He told me many good things about the fans, about the city, the club,” Fernandes reveals. “The training ground is amazing, much better than Sporting; the fans, everything around the club is amazing, so it’s a big club.

“I come to a new country, everything is new. The season was not very good, but individually it was very nice because it’s my first season in the Premier League against the best players in the world. To be able to do it well is a good thing for me.

“I’ve never been in a place like this one. I can enjoy everything – even the weather here is good! The atmosphere is amazing, even when we are losing. I’m very happy to be here, I’m enjoying my time here.”

He does draw the line at English food (he doesn’t seem too impressed by fish and chips) but it’s clear that Fernandes has formed a strong bond with Southampton; the club, the city, but most of all the people.

“They show me in every game that they like me,” he says. “That game against Leicester was unbelievable, I have never been in one place like that, singing my song almost the whole second half. It was very nice.

“I’m very happy. I try to play for the team, for them as well, so it’s important to me to feel they like me.

“I think the mentality here is completely different from my country. If we do this in Portugal and lose three, four games, they kill the players.”

The Leicester game at the start of May was when he was substituted just shy of the hour mark with Saints 2-0 down, prompting the travelling fans to serenade the Portuguese youngster for the remainder of the match. It clearly left its mark on him.

He thinks the Brighton away game, back in November, was the first time he heard the chant.

“One of my friends sent me a video and I saw the song,” he smiles. “I don’t know why they sing ‘he will score a goal for me’ because I just have three goals – I need to do much better. But it is a good song.

“My English in the beginning was not like it is now, but I sent it to another friend and he translated for me, so I understood.”

A mainstay of the side in spite of his tender years, only Kyle Walker-Peters played more Premier League minutes than Fernandes in a Saints shirt this season.

The talented midfielder admits that exceeded his own expectations, revealing he set himself a target of 20 starts at the beginning of his debut campaign.

Of the 37 Premier League games Saints played since his August arrival, Fernandes came off the bench in the first two and started 34, only missing the other through suspension. From Russell Martin to Ivan Jurić to Simon Rusk, his presence on the teamsheet has rarely required a second thought.

By his own admission, there have been too many lows along the way. “I miss the feeling of victory,” he told the BBC last week, but there have been some notable highlights.

He loved coming up against his hero, Bruno Fernandes, at Old Trafford, where Cristiano Ronaldo once played, and where Mateus’s inswinging corner gave Saints a lead they held until the final 10 minutes.

Across the city against the then-reigning champions back in October, he took confidence from the way Saints went toe to toe with Pep Guardiola’s serial winners. He enjoyed the cup triumphs over Cardiff, where he opened his Saints account, Stoke and Swansea.

Fernandes points to his first Premier League goal, to put Saints 2-1 up at home to the Liverpool team that would go on to win the title, as “a dream come true”. In a season synonymous with grumbles, he was responsible for one of St Mary’s’ loudest cheers.

“It was a dream for a kid from my town and from my country – it’s the biggest dream for us to play in the Premier League and score against the big teams. It was a big moment for me,” he says.

His parents were there to see it, as well as his friends from Estoril, where Fernandes played last season, who flew to Southampton for the first time to see that game. “They enjoyed the atmosphere – the stadium, outside of the stadium, it was very nice.”

Whilst his friends and fans will send messages of support, his father is harder on him, Fernandes admits.

“When I score and when I play a great game I have many messages, but for me the most important is my father and the people close to me.

“If I play not good, my dad tells me. Maybe my friends don’t have the confidence to say, ‘you didn’t play well today’, so I think the most important is my dad, my girlfriend, my brother and my mum. They are the most important people for me.

“In the beginning I didn’t like it because I played, I lost, and he told me ‘you didn’t play like the Mateus I know’. I was like ****! In the moment, no, but one day or two days after the game I can watch the game again and it is true.”

As the Premier League draws to a close, for now the Algarve and a post-season debrief with dad will have to wait, as Fernandes prepares to join up with his international teammates for the forthcoming European Under-21 Championship in Slovakia.

Portugal are the top seeds in Group C, alongside France, Poland and Georgia, and could meet England, the holders, in the final if both teams win their respective groups.

“It’s a big moment for us, we want to win and I will try to win,” he says. “We have a lot of quality in the squad. We know the other national teams have quality, like Spain, like England, but we will try to play game by game and try to win every game.

“I have a contract with Southampton, so I think so,” he adds, regarding his future beyond the summer tournament. “The next season will be different, I hope. Maybe we can play much better and win many, many games. We will work for that, train for that and I think we can do much better than this year.”

Saints fans will now spend the summer hoping their favourite player stays for the promotion push, and for happier times ahead after this most unforgiving of seasons.

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