Athletico 100 years: Bruno Guimarães, the star of Generation Z

From my vantage point of the world (Getúlio Vargas inferior, sector 108), I realized that Bruno Guimarães He played with a magic hat from which he would draw many things, right from his first goal against Rio Branco in Paranaense in 2018.

That team of hopefuls became the “war team” as their star player began to dominate the perimeter of the field with his incomparable repertoire of tricks and skills.

The little wizard had arrived in May of the previous year with the blessing of another wizard, master Antonio Carletto Sobrinho, the Sicupira of the scouts. Without fanfare, as is often the case with our great idols.

He was 19 years old and had a two-year contract to establish himself as a professional player. Bruno Guimarães Rodrigues Moura It was and will forever be Fernando Diniz’s best invention.

When choosing the permanent number in 2017, he was magically and poetically fitted with shirt 39, precisely the number used to identify the car that his father used for 21 years as a taxi driver in Rio de Janeiro.

Bruno is a boy from Rio, but not from the beaches of the south zone; he is a boy from São Cristóvão, the suburban neighborhood where the imperial family lived. His smarts are real. At 39, he played 106 games and scored ten goals. He was a crucial player in the 2018 Paranaense Championship, 2018 Copa Sudamericana, 2019 Levain Cup and 2019 Copa do Brasil titles.

He scored decisive goals, gave perfect assists and passes, gave himself completely on the field and always showed impeccable off-field behavior in the real and digital world. Thus, Bruno established himself as the first athletic idol of Generation Z, born between 1995 and 2010, currently aged 19 to 29.

Those kids who were born connected and with a cell phone in their hand. Who doesn’t like to waste time. Who knows how to process quickly and self-determine by analyzing lots of data.

Bruno’s football is big data. The heat spot is all over the field: he makes a tackle in the area and scores the decisive goal in the other. Average correct passes above 90%. Simplicity as the highest form of sophistication.

This is how BG decided the Rural 18 final against the Coxes – and what a beautiful photo remained from that day. So, he crossed the Maracanã field against Fluminense to score the winning goal and put us in the Sula final.

Even Maracanã where a year later, he asked his teammates to give him the ball and took the decisive penalty with the calm of someone playing football on the beach. That’s how he got it out of his magic hat the goal that decided the difficult game against Internacional in the first leg of the Copa do Brasil.

Bruno is the most talented, most complete and charismatic player to emerge from Athletico in the 21st century. Today he is one of the stars of the Premier League and also of the national team. There are no limits to the magic of our 39 year old wizard.