It’s fair to say the past 10 days have been a physical and emotional rollercoaster for Joelinton.
Our all-action midfielder has gone from a monstrous display at Wembley and the highs of helping Newcastle lift their first domestic trophy for 70 years, to enduring a week to forget with Brazil.
It was a big chance to stake his claim for a spot in their 2026 World Cup plans, but his two outings over the past week couldn’t have gone much worse for the big man.
Last week, in the early hours of Friday morning (UK time), Joelinton was subbed on early in Brazil’s World Cup qualiying clash with Colombia, but lost the ball on the edge of his own box to gift Colombia an equaliser.
They went on to win that game, much to Joelinton’s relief, but it got worse for the 28-year-old last night, where he started against World Cup winners Argentina while a banned Bruno Guimaraes watched on from the sidelines.
Brazil went 2-0 down within 12 minutes after goals from Julian Alvarez and Enzo Fernandez and went into that break at 3-1, with Joelinton looking far from his dominating best and a little jaded alongside Wolves’ Andre.
To make a tough night even worse, he was hauled off at half-time by Brazil boss Dorival Junior and received some pretty brutal ratings from the media, who were far from impressed by his display following a 4-1 defeat.
In Globo Esporte’s player ratings piece, the Brazilian outlet gave Joelinton a 3/10; the joint lowest on the night alongside Nottingham Forest centre-back Murillo.
They said: “He had already performed poorly against Colombia and repeated the poor performance against Argentina. Overloaded, he was slow in his pursuit and was unable to reduce the space available to the opposing midfielders.
“He stopped an opponent’s counterattack in the 43rd minute and should have received a yellow card. Was taken off at half-time.”
Goal then followed up with a 5/10 for big Joe, stating: “Really struggled in the centre of the park with possession and Argentina’s press. Removed at half time.”