When Claudio Bravo takes his seat it is not entirely easy for an interviewer to point out that English football has never really seen a goalkeeper like him before. “Sweeper-keeper” seems to be the popular name for it although, back in Barcelona, they have never felt the need to give it a clever term. Either way, it all feels very new for the Premier League and no doubt there are still many people who find it all slightly perplexing.

For Bravo it is just the way he has always liked to play. Manuel Neuer is the same, so accomplished with the ball at his feet the Germany manager, Joachim Löw, has suggested Bayern Munich’s goalkeeper would not look out of place in midfield. Pep Guardiola is another manager who thinks a goalkeeper should be the team’s 11th outfield player and, slowly but surely, more and more clubs are deciding Ruud Gullit was mistaken with his assessment about what constitutes the man traditionally wearing the No1 shirt. “A goalkeeper is a goalkeeper because he can’t play football,” the Dutchman observed.

Almost 20 years on Bravo has been signed by Manchester City precisely because he can play football whereas Guardiola did not think Joe Hart could – or not, at least, to the requisite level. Hart is an England international with 68 caps, held in great affection by City’s fans, and that alone means Bravo’s first few months in Manchester have been accompanied by some intense scrutiny.

Bravo was on the bench for Barcelona the night in March 2015 when Hart put in perhaps the greatest performance of his life, earning City’s goalkeeper a long, appreciative embrace at the final whistle from Luis Suárez, and the Chilean still remembers the occasion because “if it wasn’t for him [Hart], City would have conceded many goals that day”.

Yet the man sitting down for his first in-depth interview since arriving from the Camp Nou in August does not seem in the slightest bit uptight. “Of course there are always going to be comparisons between the previous goalkeeper and the one now,” Bravo, speaking through an interpreter, says. “I know what Joe did here, he had some great seasons and he won many things with the club. But I had the same situation when I joined Barcelona, replacing Víctor Valdés, one of the best goalkeepers around. That’s just how football works. I’m here now and Joe is in another place [on loan at Torino]. You just have to be calm about these things and I’m a very relaxed person.”

He also has a relaxed style that old‑fashioned goalkeeping aficionados would not necessarily recognise given that it often means straying 30 yards from his goalline to thread passes through midfield. “I play in a way that means taking risks,” Bravo says. “The problem is that, from 300 passes, you make one mistake … I had that bad luck in one game, the Champions League tie in Barcelona, when I was sent off. But it’s a risk you must take. The criticism is going to exist but I have no problem with that. In fact, I often accept criticism because I feel it helps me to get better and get stronger. And I hardly ever remember the compliments.”

Claudio Bravo takes part in an event for Cityzens Giving , Manchester City’s global community initiative.

Bravo is a worldly, experienced competitor, 34 on his next birthday, and certainly has an impressive CV given that it includes a 12-year international career, making him the most-capped player in the history of the Chile national team. Bravo reached Leonel Sánchez’s record of 85, set in 1968, two years ago and is on 110 appearances. He has been captain and played every minute as Chile have won the past two Copa Américas, last year and this, earning a place each time in the team of the tournament, and his two years at Barcelona were not too shabby, either.

“When you are playing against Lionel Messi day to day in training it forces you to improve your level,” he says. “We are talking about the best player in the world, with an execution [shooting] faster than any other player. He forced me to raise my performance.”

Bravo’s spell at Barcelona began by not letting in a goal in their first eight games of the 2014-15 season and going, in total, 754 minutes without conceding, breaking a club record set by Pedro María Artola in 1977 in the process. His time at City, by his own admission, has not started so well bearing in mind his new team have not won a league game at home since 17 September and dropped to fourth in the table going into Saturday’s game at Leicester City.

Equally he believes the switch to a new system was never going to be entirely seamless. “We are changing the idea of how the team plays. I think it’s been positive in that sense. Maybe the results at home haven’t been positive but overall we have made some great performances. We need to keep following the same idea. We cannot play 10 games this way and then switch the method to play another way. We just need time. In Barcelona they have been playing this style for years, from the kids to the first team. Here we have had only a few months trying to learn a different way of playing from the rest of the teams in the Premier League.”

That style plainly needs a goalkeeper who sees his job as much more than saving shots and catching crosses. Yet it is also clear Bravo wants to be known for his more orthodox duties first and foremost, rather than what else he brings to the team. “Playing with my foot is something innate,” Bravo says. “I have played as a goalkeeper since I was six but I always worked on my ball skills, playing with my foot, knowing how to control the ball, how to pass. But the main thing is to save goals. What I really enjoy is to save goals and to perform well in the goal. After that then I can help the team playing with my foot.

“I feel comfortable with that role. Our style means I am very involved because, if you have a goalkeeper who is far away from the defensive line and doesn’t give support to the central defenders, I don’t think the system works. I need to know where to move and the positions to take because, aside from saving goals, there are many more things in that role.”

It all sounds very complicated, one imagines, for some of the people who were brought up with Bert Trautmann and Joe Corrigan between the sticks. Yet these are changing times. Bravo is adamant he has had “very happy months so far”, despite the criticism he has attracted, and there is absolutely no sense whatsoever of a man pining for Barcelona.

“It wasn’t difficult at all,” he says of his £14m transfer. “I didn’t make this move only for the feeling the club gave me. It was for my family, too. For us, it was very important to come to England, learn a new language and be in a culture that is so different from our country. As far as I’m concerned, I feel more and more comfortable in the club every day. I think I have arrived in the ideal place.”

Manchester City’s global community initiative, Cityzens Giving, is encouraging fans to vote for community projects around the world at cityzensgiving.org/Manchester