Strange to think of it now but this time last year, senior people at Newcastle United were referring to Bruno Guimaraes in the past tense. The team had just lost 2-0 to Manchester City in the FA Cup — one shot on target, 28 per cent possession — and the 7,800 fans who travelled to the Etihad Stadium sang: “We’re gonna win f*** all again”, which was indisputable; 69 years without a domestic trophy was now destined to become 70.
Out of the cups and 10th in the Premier League after a brutal run of injuries, the concept of Newcastle’s inevitable progress post-takeover was dented. Off the pitch, there had been little movement on big infrastructure projects (some things don’t change) and, on it, Eddie Howe’s team had stalled. As The Athletic reported that day, 13 months on from their first, losing Carabao Cup final, Newcastle were “not bigger, better, stronger… Brutally put, they have regressed”. It was an existential wobble and the tremors were felt internally.
As far as Guimaraes was concerned, Newcastle were already deep into added time. The Brazilian, who joined Newcastle from Lyon for £40million ($51.7m) in January 2022, had never pushed to leave and nobody was attempting to push him out, but there had been a gentle, honest conversation the previous summer about him seeing out the club’s return to the Champions League. The £100m ($129m) escape clause in his contract loomed over everything.
After City, the likelihood of Guimaraes remaining at St James’ Park shrivelled further. Newcastle were hurtling towards a reckoning in terms of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR), and with the club desperate to build around Alexander Isak, their prize asset, Guimaraes became their most likely departure. One leading figure speculated in private about him joining City or Paris Saint-Germain. Their verdict: Bruno was gone.
To repeat: it is funny to think of now. Guimaraes, like his team-mates, is forever enshrined in Newcastle’s history, instant legends after their 2-1 victory over Liverpool at Wembley a little over a week ago. He is the man who finally allows Bob Moncur to lay down his 56-year burden as the club’s last captain to raise a significant piece of silverware. He is the team’s heartbeat and tempo-setter, which was never more apparent than eight days ago.
If Dan Burn’s goal and elevation to the England squad became the individual story of the weekend and Isak’s goal carried a tang of inevitability — so good, so unstoppable — then Newcastle’s midfield felt like the crux of it. Liverpool had no answer to Guimaraes, Joelinton and Sandro Tonali, and their combination of energy, physicality, chaos, disruption and delivery. They played like warriors and both Guimaraes and Joelinton, his great friend, celebrated tackles like gladiators.
Afterwards, he wept (let’s face it, pretty much everybody wept). He spoke about receiving a text message from Alan Shearer, the club’s record goalscorer, that morning which read: “Bring that trophy back to the Toon please skipper” followed by a series of black and white hearts.
Guimaraes told reporters: “When you taste it once, you want to taste more. When I came to the club, we were in a different moment but I always said I would like to put my name in the club’s history. I think I did this. I did a big step.”
Bruno Guimaraes celebrates with the Carabao Cup in hand at Wembley (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
And at this point, it is worth marking just what a leap of faith was required from Guimaraes to make that big step a possibility. Of all the players who arrived in that first transfer window post-takeover in the summer of 2021 — the others were Burn, Kieran Trippier, Chris Wood and Matt Targett — he was the one who pointed to a shimmering future. He was what they could become. Yes, the club now had money, but when Guimaraes signed, they had won two games all season. They were still in the bottom three. It was a risk.
Bruno believed.
Another strange thought (everything feels strange in the context of Newcastle’s identity as serial non-winners finally being banished): this season has brought episodes of real struggle for Guimaraes.
Return to last summer and there were no takers for him at £100m and, as it turned out, no takers full stop. If anybody at Newcastle thought that Guimaraes would be an easy, obvious answer to their £60m ($77.5m) PSR black hole, they were rudely disavowed of it and instead, the club faced an unedifying scramble to sell Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh in the frantic hours before the end of the accounting period on June 30.
There was a feeling within the dressing room that Guimaraes was bruised by this; again, not because he sought to go but more because those around him had told them there would be options. Everybody wants to feel wanted and wanted by the best, but there was no substantive contact with Newcastle from anybody. By contrast, there had been negotiations with Liverpool over Anthony Gordon while Chelsea registered their interest in Isak.
It was this which partially informed Howe’s decision to name Guimaraes captain ahead of the first match of this season. On the face of it, he did not feel like a natural choice in the traditional sense; he is not a shouter, English is not his first language, and he can be an emotional player. It said more about appeasement and his prominence.
When he was booked in the 3-2 league defeat by City in January last year, it was his sixth yellow card in as many matches in all competitions. It left him one more away from a two-game suspension in the Premier League. Guimaraes promised there would not be another. Howe “didn’t believe a word of it”, he said later, but the 27-year-old was good on his promise, demonstrating that he could play with maturity.
Newcastle’s established leadership group, in which Guimaraes did not figure, was also changing. Matt Ritchie left on a free transfer last summer, Jamaal Lascelles, the club captain, and Callum Wilson were injured and no longer mainstays and Trippier had been usurped as first-choice right-back by Tino Livramento. Burn was the only member of the group to accompany the squad on their pre-season tour to Japan and quipped “it’s a bit lonely” before one of their matches there.
Promotion to the captaincy brought a positive response from Guimaraes. “Another dream came true, to be captain here where I am loved and love to be… there are many ways to be a leader,” he said but it was not without ramifications. Now it was Trippier’s turn to feel hurt, albeit he had been open to leaving Newcastle, largely for personal reasons.
There was a general note of disquiet throughout the dressing room. Gordon felt it after the Liverpool move fell through. In Japan, Sean Longstaff spoke to journalists about everybody feeling like they “had their price”. Nobody arrived to improve the first XI. It was unsettled.
“It wasn’t easy for Bruno,” someone close to the dressing room says, speaking anonymously to protect relationships. “He has had some resistance, as you always get with change.”
The fact he could barely win a coin toss at St James’ became a joke, although it meant Newcastle would be turned around and face playing uphill in the second half. Games would regularly start with a groan.
There have been episodes when he has looked fatigued, which is hardly surprising when last summer brought six appearances for Brazil, both in the Copa America and in preceding friendlies. He has played more minutes for Newcastle in the Premier League than anybody else, just as he did last season. Availability is one of his great strengths and it is just as well when you consider that since his first start, the team has not won a league game without him, but it does not always serve him well.
(Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
When Tonali returned from his long suspension for betting offences in late August, a big question — asked regularly of Howe — was whether he and Guimaraes could play together, and which one of them might miss out. The two of them were similar, looking to control matches, and when Tonali was moved into a deeper holding role, with Guimaraes shunted forward, it was the Italian who suddenly looked like the irreplaceable one.
A bitty, inconsistent start to the season had included a miserable 3-1 defeat at Fulham, when the big players like Guimaraes, Gordon and Isak scarcely turned up.
Social media, and specifically X, was pretty brutal that day.
David: “Bruno isn’t captain material. There, I dared say it out loud!”
NUFC Kobe: “Bruno is the most overrated player in our history.”
NUFCTony: “Is Bruno the right captain for the team?”
Rachael: “For me, there has been a shift in team dynamic since the captaincy has changed and I don’t think it done us any favours.”
Anonymous performances — Guimaraes was not alone — against mid-ranking teams became entrenched as a theme and, in the weeks leading up to Wembley, that expanded to games against both City and Liverpool in the Premier League.
After the latter fixture, right at the end of last month, John Anderson, the former Newcastle player, was scathing about Guimaraes on BBC Newcastle. “He has been awful lately,” he said. “There were times when he looked like he couldn’t run. He was chasing shadows at times — (Ibrahima) Konate strolled past him as if he wasn’t there. He looked like he had no legs at all. I think he has been poor for a while.”
The words were harsh but the logic was not unreasonable.
At his next press conference, Howe was asked about resting Guimaraes and about how much he was suffering physically. “It’s difficult because I’m sure if you asked Bruno, he would say he doesn’t need a rest,” he said. “It is up to us to look at his schedule and try and find ways to do that. We have tried but he’s such an important player, we have turned to him more often than we would ideally want to because of his strengths and qualities.”
Did he remain as vital as ever? “Without a doubt,” Howe said. “He’s in the middle of everything, really. He is behind a lot of our good play still. He is an outstanding player and will continue to be. We just need to help him in those moments where we can keep him fresh and get him to his best levels.”
This was less than a month ago.
If the tone of all this seems negative, then it shouldn’t because it is absolutely born of love and sometimes, love hurts. To become winners, Newcastle have had lose, both historically and this season, and Guimaraes has been required to grit his teeth and battle through. There may have been matches where he has laboured or failed to make an impact, but he has always — always — sought the ball and sought prominence. He never hides.
Since Anfield on February 26, something has altered around Guimaraes, or at least that is how it looks. After Newcastle’s 1-0 victory against West Ham United on March 10, crucial for momentum and confidence after a difficult spell, he told Sky Sports that the Carabao Cup final was “like the World Cup”. While much of the club’s preparations were about making sure the team (and fans) would peak at Wembley, he made no attempt to play down its significance.
It was noticed. “Bruno has grown into the captaincy role, especially in and around the final,” the dressing-room figure says. “He has become more vocal in the group setting and I sense the players now look at him as the leader, which is really the acid test.”
Then came the match itself. Newcastle roared and Guimaraes drove them on, prodding and pushing and perpetual motion. He was everywhere and everything. When the time came to lift the trophy, he could be seen beckoning to his left and then suddenly, there was Lascelles, who has not played a second of football this season because of an ACL injury, holding it aloft with both him and Trippier. It was a big little moment nestling within the biggest moment of all.
“It is easy to be selfish when things like that are happening but Bruno thought of others,” says the aforementioned dressing-room figure. “That is true leadership.”
Something a bit less strange: nobody at Newcastle is talking about Guimaraes in the past tense now. Who knows what might happen in the summer and how much might depend on securing a place in the Champions League, but their PSR position is much stronger and his contract stretches until 2028. They are already guaranteed a place in next season’s UEFA Conference League and have shown they can win trophies. Progress is self-evident.
Eventually, the past tense will come, though. Guimaraes will be sold, move on or retire, and a page will turn. In decades to come, he will be spoken of as Moncur’s successor, as kin to Shearer, as the man who believed when nobody believed. As the perfect captain, a leader by example and a leader full stop, who looked to involve and celebrate others at the precise moment when the world was looking at him. As Newcastle’s history boy.
(Top photo: Stu Forster/Getty Images)
