SPORT: Football
Bruno Fernandes signs a new five- year contract to stay at Manchester United with a further than doubled salary.

The Por­tuguese star has fur­ther than dou­bled his pay­ment to $ 314 000 a week.
After pen­ning his deal until 2026, which includes a 12-month option to extend, Fer­nan­des said “ From the moment that I joined Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, I’ve had a spe­cial rela­tion­ship with the club and our amaz­ing fans.

“ I grew up watch­ing this team, dream­ing of get­ting the chance to play here one day.

“ That dream is now a real­i­ty and an honour.

“ Even after two years, it still feels amaz­ing to step out at Old Traf­ford, to hear the fans sing my song and to score in front of the Stret­ford End.

“ It’s a true priv­i­lege to wear this shirt and to fight for our incred­i­ble club.”

Fer­nan­des, who fired Por­tu­gal to the World Cup in Qatar this week with two goals against North Mace­do­nia, added “ There’s so much more that I want to achieve here, and I know that’s the same for the rest of the team and staff.

“ More than any­thing, we want to give the fans the suc­cess that they deserve.

“ We’ve shared some great moments over the last years, but the best is yet to come from myself and this team.”

The club scale per­suad­ed him of their plans for the future dur­ing speeches.

Fer­nan­des, 27, was uncer­tain about stay­ing at the club dur­ing this sea­son fol­low­ing the sack­ing of Ole Gun­nar Solskjaer.

Their exit from the Cham­pi­ons League means they’re mov­ing towards anoth­er tro­phy­less sea­son now under the oper­a­tion of inter­im head Ralf Rangnick.

But Unit­ed have moved to get Ajax train­er Eric Ten Hag and start a rebuild towards chal­leng­ing for the title again.

That has per­suad­ed Fer­nan­des to com­mit him­self to the club in the long- term.

And the news was bla­zoned after he returned from inter­na­tion­al duty after reserv­ing Por­tu­gal’s place in Qatar.

Fer­nan­des joined Unit­ed in a Jan­u­ary 2020 in a£ 68million switch from Sport­ing Lisbon.

He speed­i­ly estab­lished him­self as a fans favourite with his cre­ation and goalscor­ing.
He has gone on to score 49 goals in 117 games for the club.
His pay rise sees him leapfrog club cap­tain Har­ry Maguire and Mar­cus Rash­ford in the earn­ings list.

But he’ll still pick up less week­ly than Cris­tiano Ronal­do, David de Gea, Jadon San­cho, Raphael Varane, Paul Pog­ba and Edin­son Cavani.
The news is a major boost to Unit­ed at a time when a num­ber of oth­er play­ers futures are up in the air.

Both Pog­ba and Jesse Lin­gard are set to leave the club on a free trans­fer in the sum­mer.
Rash­ford is also, for the first time, con­sid­er­ing a move out from the club.

It was wor­ried the prospect of fail­ing to qual­i­fy for the Cham­pi­ons League com­ing sea­son, as looks like­ly, could stall an agree­ment with Fer­nan­des.
But his com­mit­ment will help to kick start a sum­mer of rebuild­ing at Unit­ed as they aim to come title con­tenders again com­ing season.