Bruno Guimarães and his Newcastle teammates limbered up for Sunday’s Carabao Cup final against Liverpool with a modern history lesson. Their tutor was a former England international and one of the finest midfielders to have worn black and white stripes.
“Rob Lee was the last player to score at Wembley for Newcastle,” says Guimarães. “So, when we met, I touched Rob’s feet to give me a little bit of luck.”
By now the Brazil midfielder is proving so charmingly engaging that no one quite has the heart to tell Newcastle’s captain that Lee scored the goal in question with his head. It arrived in 2000 and was an equaliser in an FA Cup semi-final Chelsea proceeded to win 2-1.
Lee, twice a losing FA Cup finalist with Newcastle in the late 90s, is 59 now and will be at Wembley to cheer on his old team on with his son and grandson. Guimarães hopes they will depart having seen Newcastle end a domestic trophy drought stretching back to 1955 when Jackie Milburn scored Newcastle’s opening goal in a 3-1 FA Cup final triumph against Manchester City.
“Seventy years is too much to wait,” says Guimarães, who describes the meeting with Liverpool as “our World Cup final”. “Hopefully we can finally bring a trophy back to Newcastle. We just want to make thousands and thousands of Geordies happy.”
Guimarães and his teammates said much the same two years ago but they failed to rise to the Wembley occasion as Manchester United cantered to a comfortable 2-0 League Cup victory. This time Guimarães senses it will be different.
“Now I’ve got normal hair so I can, maybe, be more lucky,” he says, stroking a hand through a fashionable dark close crop after a dalliance with the bleached blond look of the 2023 final. “But the hair colour’s my choice, not Eddie Howe’s.”
Critics of Howe’s decision to make the 27-year-old Newcastle’s captain certainly had reason to revise such opinions as his high-wattage charisma defied the manager’s aim of keeping Wembley preparations understatedly low key. No matter that Liverpool are England’s champions elect and Mohamed Salah has scored 13 times in 14 games against teams managed by Howe, Guimarães’s sheer positivity seems almost elemental.
“We see this as a big opportunity to make history for this club,” he says. “At our best we’re a really great team. We’re not seeing Sunday as pressure, we’re seeing it as a privilege.”
Eyebrows were raised in January 2022 when he walked into a relegation fight after arriving from Lyon for £35m. At the time he had widely been expected to join Arsenal but swiftly endeared himself to a new public by declaring that he regarded Newcastle as “definitely bigger” than the north London club.
Back then, an interpreter helped Guimarães explain that the club’s Saudi Arabian owners had sold him their idea of a “project” involving the ultimate collection of the Champions League trophy. For the moment, though, any silverware will do.
“We know if we win this one it’s going to be massive for the city, massive for the project,” says Guimarães. “The most difficult step is always the first one.
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“When I signed I said I wanted to win something here and be part of this club’s history. I see this as my best opportunity. It’ll be a very difficult game but we’re on it, our confidence is very high. On our day we can beat any team in the world.”
He feels infinitely older and wiser than two years ago when he burst into tears at the final whistle. “Against Man Utd we were really average,” he says. “Now we’re in a much better moment.”
Guimarães’s relocation to a No 8 role after Sandro Tonali switched to the 6 position has amplified his attacking instincts, not to mention helped Sweden’s Alexander Isak score 22 goals this season. Isak waxes lyrical about his captain’s contribution.
“Bruno was always amazing but he’s taken further steps forward as a player and a leader,” he says. “The games he controls, we usually win.
He’s the heart of the team and it’s nice he’s become an 8 because he’s closer to me on the field. I love to play with Bruno. As a captain, his passion for this club and for football is contagious. It gives us all energy.”
Salah has spoken of how he channels his emotions through an amalgam of meditation, yoga and visualisation exercises, and Guimarães is a big fan of the last of these.
“I’ve visualised walking up the Wembley steps to collect the trophy,” he says a smile. “I’ve done that many times. I’m always emotional but I want to be happy at the end. We want everything to be amazing this time.”
