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1 month ago
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Bruno Guimaraes and Brazil lost to Miguel Almiron and Paraguay back in September.
That most recent World Cup group qualifier saw the Newcastle United and one of his Brazilian teammates subbed off at half-time.
Brazil boss Dorival Junior trying something different in that second-half but not improvement, as Paraguay won 1-0.
Living on borrowed time already despite just ten games in the job, Dorival Junior now going to try something different from the very start, when Brazil play Chile on Thursday.
The then new Brazil boss started off with a 1-0 win against England at Wembley, however, the next nine games have brought only three wins.
Dorival Junior announcing he will make two big changes for this game against Chile, with Abner and Igor Jesus replacing Bruno Guimaraes and Endrick.
The Brazil team v Chile:
Ederson, Danilo, Marquinhos, Gabriel Magalhães and Abner; André and Lucas Paquetá; Savinho, Raphinha, Rodrygo and Igor Jesus .
Dorival Junior explaining at his press conference the reasons for dropping Bruno Guimaraes, as quoted by Globo Esporte:
“Bruno Guimaraes is a very important player.
“Leaving him out of the team [for this match] doesn’t mean he loses his importance, he knows that.
“It’s just an attempt to find a different midfield… as is the case with Paqueta.
“He 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 our best players, if not the best, in the Copa America.”
A big irony for Bruno Guimaraes, that it will his best mate Lucas Paqueta filling his role in midfield tomorrow.
From a Newcastle United perspective AND arguably a Bruno Guimaraes perspective overall, getting a bit of a break from starting pretty much every single game for club and country might not be the worst thing to happen.
I am guessing almost for sure Bruno will appear as a sub at some point anyway, plus Dorival Junior appears to make clear the Newcastle United midfielder is still very much in his plans.
However, when you are under so much pressure as Dorival Junior is, then changes were inevitable I guess.
The South American World Cup qualifying group currently looks like this, the top six automatically qualify for the 2026 finals (to be held in Mexico, Canada and USA) and the seventh in the table goes into a play-off to try and reach the finals:
Each country with still 10 group games to play and no serious threat of Brazil not qualifying you would think, but at some point, they have to put the wins on the board.
After this away game against Chile, Brazil have a home match on Tuesday against Peru, the only team below Chile in the table at this moment in time.

 
