Before Mateus Fernandes pulls on his West Ham shirt on Sunday afternoon for an FA Cup quarter-final, he will take a moment, as he always does, to speak to a man who is no longer with him but forever by his side.
He will seek the advice of Antonio Paulo, known as To Ze, his very first coach at boyhood club Olhanense in the Algarve, who died of cancer when Fernandes was 11 years old, and whose image lies inked at the top of his left arm. His face, too, adorns another shirt that Fernandes hangs beside his own in the dressing room.
The tattoo, which he had done when he turned 18 and his dad told him he was allowed, depicts a man in a tracksuit and trainers wrapping the captain’s armband around the very same part of this young footballer’s arm, No10 on his back, and, beneath it, a detailed close-up of an eye with a football pitch reflected in its pupil.
‘He is my lucky star,’ says Fernandes. ‘He was my teacher of football. Every game, I put a shirt of him in my place and I speak with him to give me good advice, to show me the correct way, to give me support for the game, positive vibes, and to help me and my team-mates win the game. I try to be his kid, like I was then.
‘We visited him in hospital and he died two days later. After that, I speak with him every night.
‘In those times, it was not just about football. He cared about your family, he paid for us to travel. Football is not the most important thing. The most important is the relationship, the friend, and he showed this every week.’
Fernandes will lean on To Ze’s advice once more to help take West Ham past Leeds on Sunday to secure a place at Wembley and a first FA Cup semi-final for the club in 20 years. He will do the same against Wolves on Friday night as he tries to help keep the Hammers in the Premier League.
It seems to be working. Since the departure of Lucas Paqueta in January, the Portuguese has grasped the mantle of being West Ham’s midfield maestro. The £38million summer signing from Southampton is finally beginning to thrive under Nuno Espirito Santo and it’s sparked a run of results that, despite defeat to Aston Villa before the international break, has transformed this once shambolic outfit into a team with real belief.
‘I think we changed mentality after the QPR game [in the FA Cup third round, when the Hammers won 2-1 after extra-time],’ says Fernandes. ‘We felt the positive vibes in dressing room and after that we started winning. If you look at the squad, almost every player plays for the national team. So, we have quality but that’s not enough in the Premier League.’
They have a new senior international in the dressing room now, too, after Fernandes, the Portugal under-21 captain, earned his first call-up for the friendlies against Mexico and USA – one he only found out about via his girlfriend.
‘I knew the manager was speaking at 1pm so I was training and then I was in the gym so forgot about it but when I saw a call from my girlfriend then I knew,’ he says. ‘It was a beautiful day and a dream come true. It was a dream for my family as well. We have worked on this since I was a kid.’
Fernandes, who started life as a goalkeeper, left home at 13 to join the Sporting Lisbon academy, the club of his idols Cristiano Ronaldo and namesake Bruno Fernandes. It was for the latter that Fernandes came off the bench for the final five minutes of Portugal’s victory over USA in Atlanta.
‘He’s a normal guy, like me,’ smiles Fernandes, a charming young man, speaking to Daily Mail Sport from the club’s Rush Green training ground. ‘Sometimes you think they are much more than us but they are just normal. Cristiano was the biggest one for us as kids. He’s the biggest player in my country and the world. When you grow up, you try to look for players in your position so I looked to Bruno to try to learn. I just enjoyed it and tried to learn the small details with him.’
A shame that Ronaldo wasn’t in the squad, too, then? ‘It took a little bit of pressure off me,’ laughs Fernandes. ‘I think with him in the squad, I feel a bit more pressure. I hope I play with him next time!’
The next time could be at the World Cup. He rates his chances of going as ’50-50’ right now, mainly due to the abundance of talent in Portugal’s midfield with the likes of Bruno, Bernardo Silva, Vitinha, Joao Neves and Ruben Neves.
‘We have a lot of players ready for the World Cup. I need to show that I can do it much better than them. If I do good things here with West Ham, play games, play well, I think I can do it. I will be ready for the World Cup if they call me.’
For Fernandes, it’s always been about the World Cup. That’s what got him through a difficult year at Southampton last season where he would go back to his quiet apartment with his girlfriend still in Portugal. ‘I learned many things about football, I learned all of these things alone.’
That’s what made sure he went to the training ground on his days off to keep improving even as Saints lost nearly every game.
‘If you want to go to the World Cup, you need to be professional every day. That was my focus. It was difficult but this year I played for the national team. I’m one step closer to the World Cup.’
He’s finding life easier now. His girlfriend has made the move over now he’s in London. He loves to play padel but, somehow, hasn’t found anyone yet to play with. He tried to play golf with his West Ham team-mates but it didn’t go well: ‘I never hit the ball!’
Fernandes knows the best way to show Roberto Martinez that he deserves a spot on the plane this summer is to get West Ham to Wembley and keep them in the Premier League.
Victory over Leeds will take care of the former. The latter is likely to go down to the wire. It’s so nerve-racking at the foot of the Premier League table that Fernandes can’t bring himself to watch any of the games of their relegation rivals. He turns the notifications off for the football apps on his phone until after full-time. When his dad came over to visit, Fernandes refused to watch Nottingham Forest’s defeat by Liverpool with him.
‘He put the television on while I was sleeping and then I came over and he said: “come on, come and watch it with me”,’ he says. ‘I said, no, change the channel and we put another game on.
‘I can’t. It’s too much pressure. If you start looking for those games, you forget the main point: it’s your team, it’s your things you can control.
‘I just try to look at us and try to believe we can do it. We don’t think about the other clubs. If we beat Wolves, we are much closer. It is just us against the world and it will be until the end of the season.’
And what if West Ham win the FA Cup? Another tattoo of the trophy to go alongside To Ze?
‘Ah, we’ll see!’
