Manchester City defender Matheus Nunes may not have as much support as usual when he takes on Sunderland this weekend
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 13: Matheus Nunes of Manchester City celebrates to fans after the Premier League 2026/27 match between Manchester United and Manchester City at Old Trafford on September 13, 2026 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Joe Prior/Visionhaus via Getty Images)
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 13: Matheus Nunes of Manchester City celebrates to fans after the Premier League 2026/27 match between Manchester United and Manchester City at Old Trafford on September 13, 2026 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Joe Prior/Visionhaus via Getty Images)
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Matheus Nunes
Plenty of Manchester City players will look out for the dates of the Manchester United games when the fixture list drops. Others may look for returns to previous clubs, such as Elliot Anderson at Nottingham Forest or - more acrimniously - Enzo Fernandez at Chelsea.
For Matheus Nunes, it is Sunderland - the team of his stepdad that gives him a chance to wind him up. "When I have an argument with my father, I can go to the game and p*** him off," he said in summer.
Having a family of Mackems that are all season ticket holders at the Stadium of Light is not what you would expect of Brazilian-born Portugal international Nunes, but then very little about his life and career has been orthodox.
Moving from midfield to right-back must seem tame for somebody who had to hide in his house aged six when thieves with guns stormed into it looking to escape capture from the police. Food and money were scarce in a "very rough" upbringing before his family moved to Portugal when he was 13 and things began to improve.
Still, as much as he enjoyed football it wasn't the academies of Benfica or Porto where Nunes cut his teeth. He spent time working in a bakery at the end of his teenage years as he struggled to cope with a number of unsuccessful trials at clubs all over Europe.
It was only when he was 20 that a move to Estoril came, and after they played Sporting in a club game he was snapped up by the Lisbon giants. Pep Guardiola called him one of the best players in the world after a Champions League game in 2022, and soon after that he became a record signing for Wolves.
He was on a list of City midfield targets in 2023 but well down it, only for complications to arise with everyone above him. A standout performance at Old Trafford early in that season impressed staff and members of the Treble squad, and City pounced - although it took Nunes going on strike at Wolves to force a move and he has been viciously booed every time he has been back at Molineux.
More trouble was afoot though, with Guardiola quickly deciding that, despite his words a few years earlier, Nunes couldn't cut it in the City midfield. He was scarcely used in his first season, and in his second year he started at left wing and then moved back to full-back; immediately came one of his lowest moments when he made a mistake that saw City lose the derby to Ruben Amorim's United.
Nobody expected Nunes to make a success of his time at City at that point, yet he fought back. It took time for him to accept a new role at right-back - as well as many conversations with his friends and his psychologist - but it was one he grew to relish as last season went on and he began to embrace his opportunity.
"I would tell my friends all the time, ‘I'm not a full-back, I'm not a full-back’. And they would always say, no, but you play so good there, you play so good,' he told the Manchester Evening News in summer. "The teammates, Bernardo and Ruben, were so annoying all the time as well, they were in my head constantly as well, ‘You were good there, you were good there. You need to accept it.’
"And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. All the time. But yeah, 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. If you do, maybe you miss your chance. And if I did that I would have missed it.
"So yeah, listening to everyone then actually seeing Pep during training and before the games as well, the way he believed in me once I changed to that position, I felt there was a bit of a difference also in the way that we interacted with each other after I played there.
"I don't know, this stuff, you just feel it, it's not something that I can explain. I just feel it. And once you start seeing all of this stuff, it changes the mindset."
As one good performance followed another, so too did the perception of him among City fans. The Manchester derby at Old Trafford last season came only 13 months after his horrible mistake at the Etihad against United, yet his absence from the teamsheet through illness worried fans; they were right to be concerned, as City were limp - as they tended to be without the 28-year-old.
Erling Haaland was the only player to be used more last season, and after illness at the start of this campaign Nunes has quickly settled under Enzo Maresca. He was colossal in the derby win at Old Trafford on Sunday, bringing the ball forward 150 metres across 14 carries as he helped turn defence into attack for City and neuter a United team that had an extra man.
It was all done with a minimum of fuss, and Nunes will continue to go under the radar whenever the best full-backs in the league are discussed. Unlike most footballers, he doesn't have a team of people employed to make him sound good and get him into those kind of conversations.
He is appreciated at City though, as well as at home, and that is enough for a happy life. Nunes may have to upset some of his family this weekend, but if he does he will be even more treasured at the Etihad.