Dorival Júnior has managed ten matches for Brazil so far, and Newcastle United’s Bruno Guimarães has started nine of those.
He won’t be starting against Chile, though, with the national manager making changes and the Magpies favourite falling on the wrong side of his decision making.
Brazil are currently fifth in the South American qualifying group for the World Cup. That obviously isn’t considered good enough and their performance at the Copa America was disappointing.
There’s a lot of pressure on Dorival Júnior to get things right. For the Chile match he’s changing things a little, and that leaves Bruno Guimarães without a place.
The manager, however, wanted to make it clear he hasn’t given up on the Newcastle United player.
Globo Esporte quote him as saying: “Bruno is a very important player. His departure today doesn’t mean he loses his importance, he knows that. It’s just an attempt to find a different midfield, with a player who is more accustomed to getting closer, as is the case with (Lucas) Paquetá.
“He (the West Ham United midfielder) has already performed this role in other moments here in the national team, maybe we can repeat all of this. Especially because we will have a player like Raphinha in the middle who will support the midfield. With this, we will strengthen our ability to recover the ball and reach the opponent’s goal a little more. This does not mean that, in the match, Bruno cannot maintain his importance in the group. He was one of the best players, if not the best, in the Copa América.”
Despite the nice words from the Brazil manager, being dropped from the starting eleven will obviously hurt for the Newcastle United midfielder and he’ll hope he can return quickly.
Brazil’s starting XI for Chile is expected to be: Ederson, Danilo, Marquinhos, Gabriel Magalhães and Abner; André and Lucas Paquetá; Savinho, Raphinha, Rodrygo and Igor Jesus.
The match kicks off at 1am BST on Friday.
