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Who are Fabio and Rafael's favourite current Reds?
Former Manchester United twins Fabio and Rafael da Silva are keeping tabs on the Reds’ progress this season and have revealed their favourite players in our current squad.
The popular brothers represented United a combined 226 times after arriving at the club together in 2008 and are the welcome guests on this week’s episode of the Inside Carrington podcast.
Dialling in from their home country of Brazil, Fabio and Rafael sit down with MUTV’s Liam Bradford and Helen Evans, plus former team-mate Wes Brown, who was keen to know which members of our current roster the boys have a particular liking for.
Inside Carrington: Da Silva twins
INSIDE CARRINGTON | It's great to have Fabio and Rafael da Silva on the pod! The twins join us from Rio de Janeiro...
“I think it’s easy,” Rafael begins. “For me, it’s Bruno Fernandes by far, I just love him.
“He’s going to do it [get the Premier League assists record],” he adds later, when the conversation moves on to the creative feat our skipper is chasing down.
“I like the Brazilian boys,” Fabio says. “I like Casemiro and I like [Matheus] Cunha.
“I think Cunha has a strong mentality for the game, I really like [him].”
Both Premier League winners during their years in Manchester, the twins know what is needed to be successful and their takes on the men from Michael Carrick’s group are fascinating.
In an extension to the answer above, they also speak about being among the first handful of Brazilians to represent the Reds, and the way that Casemiro and Cunha wearing the red shirt now fills them with an immense sense of pride.
Cunha became the 11th and latest man from the South American nation to play for United earlier this term, with Rafael the fourth, after trailblazer Kleberson preceded the twins' former team-mates Anderson and Rodrigo Possebon, while Fabio was fifth in line for the honour.
'We didn't have Paul Scholes in Brazil'
PODCAST CLIP | The da Silvas name two Reds who impressed their younger selves, and three players they are fans of now...
“It makes me think about the past as well, when we played there. I always want [to see] Brazilian players.”
Rafael goes on to say: “The good thing was, after us, Ando [Anderson], me, my brother, Rodrigo, other players... [previously] we didn’t have a lot of Brazilians in Manchester United.
“Now you just keep it [going]. After us, there’s a lot of Brazilian players.”
It was a shame Fabio and Rafael couldn’t join us at the training ground for the podcast, but the twins are looking forward to coming back to Manchester next month.
They tell us during the recording that they are planning to attend our Old Trafford clash with Liverpool in May, and we’ll hope to see them then.
In the meantime, you can listen to and watch the full episode now, in which we also hear about when Rafael was mistaken for his brother by Sir Alex Ferguson, the sport that Fabio is now excelling at away from the pitch and what they make of the job Carrick - another of their former colleagues - is doing as our head coach.