Bruno Guimaraes landed on Tyneside in January and immediately made himself a Gallowgate hero. He tells FFT that he owes it all to his dad’s lucky taxi number...
Words Marcus Alves
BRUNO GUIMARAES
Bruno Guimaraes was on a flight to Quito when his phone began to buzz. It was January 24 and the Brazilian midfielder, having just helped Lyon to a derby win against Saint-Etienne, was convinced that he would be staying in Ligue 1 for the rest of the campaign.
He had headed to Madrid and joined the rest of Brazil’s European-based players on a charter plane to Ecuador, for a round of World Cup qualifiers. It was an 11-hour journey, and Guimaraes passed the time watching TV. Suddenly his phone went crazy. On the other end of the line was Giuliano Bertolucci, one of his agents and the go-to guy for Brazilian footballers wanting a Premier League switch – his clients include David Luiz, Oscar, Willian, Philippe Coutinho and Richarlison.
Even with the winter transfer window drawing to a close, not for a second did it cross Guimaraes’ mind that Bertolucci might be calling with a last-minute offer. “To be honest,” he now tells FourFourTwo, “I wasn’t expecting any bids at that stage, because Lyon had already received some offers for me and rejected all of them – so to see Giuliano phoning me non-stop was a bit of a surprise.”
Bertolucci did his best to get hold of Guimaraes. He tried again. He kept trying, but it was looking impossible. The midfielder smiles as he explains why. “I was using the Wi-Fi from the plane, and you know how that works, right? It’s never very good. But Giuliano kept calling me, so I messaged him: ‘Damn, it’s impossible – I can’t seem to be able to answer your call’. He decided to send a voice message – and that didn’t work either. My Wi-Fi connection was that terrible! I told him, ‘You’d better write it’.”
It was only then that Guimaraes read for the first time about the team that would fulfil his boyhood dream of playing in the Premier League. The 24-year-old recalls, “Giuliano went straight to the point – he wrote, ‘Very good offer from Newcastle. Lyon have already accepted it. Do you want to talk about it and listen to them?’ That was how I found out about it. From that moment on, everything moved quickly.”
Once the plane had landed, Guimaraes immediately did his own research into Newcastle United. “I checked where they were in the Premier League table, if they had any other Brazilian players apart from Joelinton, and read a bit about the team,” he continues. “Back th
