Guimaraes played the full 90 minutes of Brazil’s defeat to Bolivia
Sean McCormick is a football writer covering Newcastle United for ChronicleLive. After starting his career covering North East sport, he has had a spell working as an editor on the Manchester Evening News. He also writes about darts and boxing. He joined us in 2016.
Brazil head coach Carlo Ancelotti talks to Bruno Guimaraes during the defeat to Bolivia(Image: DANIEL MIRANDA/AFP via Getty Images)
Newcastle United captain Bruno Guimaraes played the full 90 minutes in the early hours of Wednesday morning as Brazil fell to a shock 1-0 defeat in Bolivia.
Carlo Ancelotti’s side had already sealed their qualification to next summer’s World Cup and Guimaraes had scored in their 3-0 win over Chile last week.
As a result, they headed to Bolivia in their final game of South American World Cup qualifying and made wholesale changes to the team that had won at the Maracana a few days earlier.
However, Guimaraes was the only outfield player who retained his place in the starting XI in the brutal conditions at the Estadio Municipal de El Alto.
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The stadium has a capacity of 23,000 spectators and is located at an altitude of 4,088 metres above sea level making the air thinner and the oxygen supply shorter.
Players have been known to use oxygen masks after games away in Bolivia and it has handed them a huge advantage in home games since the national team decided to play games there as opposed to the capital city, La Paz.
Not only was he the only player to start both games, Guimaraes played the whole 90 minutes and gave away a penalty as Bolivia secured the win they needed to book their place in the inter-confederation play-offs in March and a shot at booking their first World Cup appearance since 1994.
For Brazil it meant they finished fifth in the South American standings and despite sealing qualification for next summer’s World Cup, there is much work for Carlo Ancelotti to do to make them into genuine contenders to win the competition.
For Newcastle, they now must wait for Guimaraes to return to Tyneside and see what effect the international break has taken on him physically.
Guimaraes should arrive back in Newcastle today after a long flight back from South America and will have two days to recover and get ready to face Wolves on Saturday.
With the huge Champions League game against Barcelona on the horizon and Newcastle set to enter a gruelling period of two games per week, Eddie Howe will want to be certain his captain is in a strong enough physical condition to play on Saturday without risking any further damage ahead of an important period of the season.
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