Bruno Fernandes credited Chelsea flop Ricardo Quaresma for his sublime pass in the lead-up to Manchester United's second goal against Nottingham Forest.
The 28-year-old midfielder helped the Red Devils secure safe passage through to the League Cup final with an emphatic 5-0 aggregate victory, expertly setting up the in-form Marcus Rashford, who allowed Fred to make it 2-0 on the night. Man of the match Fernandes got all the glory for the goal, as his wonderful outside-of-the-boot pass picked out Rashford and got fans off their seats.
Post-match, the United star was asked about the pass - known as a 'trivela' - and he unselfishly revealed that Portuguese compatriot Quaresma, who played just five times on loan at Chelsea in 2009, was his inspiration. "I learned from Quaresma," Fernandes told Sky Sports, having played alongside the former Barcelona and Inter Milan trickster on international duty.
"I had a great professor in Portugal, you have to learn with the players, you have to learn their tricks and you have to use them. As Luke [Shaw] said, one out of 20 [skills coming off] is not bad. I'm really happy for the performance of the team, for the goals that we create. We had more chances and could have scored more, but I think Nottingham defended really well."
Forest did indeed stave off the Red Devils for 73 minutes until substitute Anthony Martial broke the deadlock with a fortuitous finish. Fred then got his goal three minutes later to ensure that United would be booking their ticket to Wembley for a mouth-watering final clash with high-flying Newcastle on Sunday, February 26.
On reaching their first Wembley final in six years, Shaw - part of the Red Devils side who achieved that feat and won the League Cup under Jose Mourinho in 2017 - said: "It's very special. It shows where we are at the moment. The boys are in a good moment and we feel the crowd are with us.
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"It's a final we can really look forward to but we have a few big games first before we go there. It's extremely pleasing but there's no point going to a final if we don't win it. It's where we want to be. We want to get this club back to where it should be which is winning trophies. Newcastle are an extremely good team but it's a big moment for us in where we want to go."
Fernandes added: It's really good. We reach one final [during my time here] but we unfortunately didn't win that one. Now we have another chance. I'm really happy with the performance of the team and the goals we created. We did it, we won and we're into the final so we're really happy."
