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The original was posted on /r/soccer by /u/Sparksquidme on 2025-08-13 07:26:49+00:00.

Bernardo Silva’s eyes widen in awe as he walks into the dining room of Villa Tasca, the luxurious 16th-century mansion located five miles west of Palermo.Jackie Kennedy, Otto von Bismarck and Richard Wagner are among the previous visitors here and it was a filming location for the second series of HBO’s hit drama The White Lotus, which explains why the going rate for a monthly stay is £150,000.

Tonight the City Football Group is throwing a party in the 20-acre gardens for the great and the good from Manchester City and Palermo, two of its member clubs who will play each other in a pre-season friendly the following night.

As manager and captain of City respectively, Pep Guardiola and Silva drop in to chat to the well-heeled guests before filing into the Contessa Suite and the dining room for their media interviews.Before taking his seat at the dining table, Silva glances at the frescoes on the walls, and the paintings of pheasants and rabbits that recall the villa’s history as a former hunting lodge. City’s own hunting season lasted only a couple of months last year before they watched Liverpool pull away and that clearly still irks Silva and his team-mates.

“There’s a lot of guilt among the players, in the manager, in everyone for not doing better last season,” Silva, 31, says. “A team with our experience, with our quality, even with [the injuries we had], we cannot go down as easily as we did. We should have done better to overcome this situation. About competing for the title, we didn’t even give it a try.”

Few felt the pain of defeat more than Silva, who had won at least one trophy in each of the seven seasons that followed his £43.5million transfer from Monaco in 2017.

“I’m a bad loser, yeah,” Silva says. “I hate losing. I played 12 years at Benfica and they taught us not to be happy if you lose.”

That Silva chose to sip from his coffee cup rather than applaud Liverpool during a guard of honour at the Etihad Stadium in 2020 proves he does not take losing well.

“In my opinion, it’s kind of a hypocrisy [the guard of honour],” Silva says. “It’s not a tradition we have in Portugal. If they want to do it, they can do it, but I wasn’t going to clap Liverpool because that’s not how I celebrate defeat. When I win a title, I don’t need anyone else to clap for me.”

Soon after their third-place finish last season, Guardiola took several steps to boost City’s chances of avoiding another trophyless campaign. He reshuffled his backroom staff, brought in five new signings and started purging his squad of deadwood.

“After Kevin [De Bruyne] announced he was leaving, Pep called me into his office and he said he would like me to be the new captain,” Silva says. “He said that some things last season didn’t go the way that he wanted so he chose [me].

“It was the first time he chose a captain so that was a bit weird for me, but I’m very proud that he chose me and the dressing room accepted it quite well. It’s a big responsibility, especially after what happened last season. We want things to go back to normality and normality at the club is fighting for every title.”

Guardiola has suggested publicly that he had misgivings about some aspects of the leadership group, spearheaded by former skipper Kyle Walker, last season. Privately, some staff members did not feel that Walker was leading by example, and that he jumped ship for AC Milan halfway through the campaign did not reflect well on him either.

“[Through] good behaviour and respect in terms of arriving on time, performing well in training sessions, giving your best for the club, not taking any shortcuts, not trying to cheat your job,” he says.

“We have to respect each other and the competition there is. I want to play all games and the guy that’s in my position, he also wants to play all games. I think that will put us a step closer to fighting back.”