Bernardo Silva told me I know nothing about football - he's the perfect Man City captain

It had felt like a pretty innocuous enquiry at the time. Manchester City had just turned their FA Cup quarter-final at Bournemouth on its head, and Bernardo Silva had been escorted to the Vitality Stadium mixed zone to talk to the journalists present.

That essentially amounted to me, with colleagues focusing on getting words from Pep Guardiola and Andoni Iraola, while I waited in the concourse to try and speak to a City player.

It all started easily enough, and after his superb second-half cameo, it felt like Nico O'Reilly was worthy of discussion. Bernardo said of the 20-year-old that "we need fresh blood sometimes and we need the legs."

Given the season's narrative, which had largely been about an ageing squad running out of steam, I asked if bringing young players through was now a big part of the season. "I don't think that was part of the problem," said Bernardo. I asked if the team's age profile had been overplayed, and he said, "That's people who don't understand the game."

Things were starting to get tense now, and when I asked him what he meant, the tables turned. "Tell me, which player? Give me names?"

This is a journalist's worst nightmare, when suddenly the questions are being asked of you. I had a split second to decide what to do. "Errrr, some people would say, yourself, Kevin...", I responded, hiding myself behind that phrase "some people". Before I could continue with my list, Bernardo, rightly, interrupted.

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"I'm 30 years old," he said. Which was a fair point. He