Matheus Nunes has opened up about his initial resistance to reinventing himself as a right-back at Manchester City, admitting he spent months denying he could play the role before a change of mindset transformed his career.
Matheus Nunes: One of the world's best right-backs!
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When remembering the circumstances under which his metamorphosis arrived, Matheus Nunes' once reluctance to transform from a central midfielder into a defensive right-back is certainly understandable.
Originally signed by Manchester City from Wolverhampton Wanderers as a midfielder in August 2023, the Portugal international had arrived to add dynamism to Pep Guardiola’s engine room, but struggled to establish himself in the middle of the park.
When City endured arguably the worst season of the Pep Guardiola era in 2024/25, Nunes found himself shifted around the pitch - deployed on the left-wing at times, and then thrown in at left-back for a pre-Christmas derby against Manchester United that would prove a game to forget for Nunes.
How Nunes' lowest point sparked his transformation
Manchester City were on course for a win at the Etihad Stadium before Matheus Nunes conceded a late penalty that brought an equaliser, with Amad Diallo snatching a stoppage-time winner. It was a chastening evening for a player already wrestling with a role he had not yet made peace with.
“Individually, I would say this is probably the most difficult game,” he admitted during a recent interview. “I did one mistake and it led to a goal, and then you end up losing the game, and that’s all you think in your head.
"But it was not only that. It was me coming to a place where it was uncomfortable for me, a position where it was uncomfortable for me, not being able to accept it.”
The turning point, Nunes revealed, came the following summer at the expanded Club World Cup in the United States, where a run of strong performances finally convinced him that he belonged in the role.
Under the defensive tutelage of assistants Pep Lijnders and, in particular, former Arsenal ‘Invincible’ Kolo Toure, he grew into a mainstay of the side - so much so that supporters and team-mates alike took to calling him ‘Cafunes’ - a nod to Brazil’s World Cup-winning full-back Cafu.
By April, Pep Guardiola was moved to describe him as becoming one of the best right-backs in the world.
'I'm not a full-back', recalls Matheus Nunes
Speaking to Sam Lee of The Athletic earlier this month, the Portugal international offered a candid account of the mental battle that preceded his emergence as one of the club’s standout performers - a journey that began, by his own admission, with flat refusal.
“I spoke to so many people. I have a psychologist. I spoke to my friends. I would tell my friends all the time, ‘I’m not a full-back, I’m not a full-back’,” Nunes explained.
“The team-mates, Bernardo Silva and Ruben Dias, were so annoying all the time as well. They were in my head constantly. ‘You were good there, you need to accept it’. And I was like, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no’. All the time.”
Nunes: You can’t be denying it for the rest of your life
It was only when the 27-year-old accepted that his stubbornness risked costing him that the breakthrough arrived.
“At a certain point, you just have to see what the people are saying. You can’t be denying it for the rest of your life,” he said. “If you do, maybe you miss your chance. And if I did that, I would have missed it.”
What next for Nunes under Enzo Maresca?
That the praise came at all owes everything to the mental shift the defender forced upon himself.
Pep Guardiola has since departed the Etihad Stadium, with his former assistant Enzo Maresca now charged with leading Manchester City into a new era - and the once-reluctant right-back, unthinkable as it might have seemed 12 months ago, is set to be a central figure in it.