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There is a type of pressure that only those who have stepped onto a World Cup field can truly understand. Bruno Guimarães felt this firsthand on Sunday (5), at the MetLife Stadium in the United States, during the direct clash between Brazil and Norway in the round of 16 of the 2026 World Cup. At 9 minutes into the game, Matheus Cunha suffered a penalty inside the area — and, after four minutes of VAR review, the responsibility of taking the penalty fell precisely on the feet of the Newcastle midfielder.
According to a report by the portal Lance!, Bruno Guimarães’ penalty was shot to the left corner of the goal, but goalkeeper Orjan Nyland made a tight save and prevented Brazil from opening the score early in the match. The play ended up weighing on the final result: Norway won 2-1 and eliminated the Brazilian team still in the round of 16 of the 2026 World Cup. Neymar, who started the match on the bench, came on in the second half and converted the penalty that resulted in Brazil’s only goal of the afternoon, but it wasn’t enough: Erling Haaland decided the match for the Norwegians. In this sense, the missed penalty by Bruno Guimarães drew attention not only for the decisive moment but also for a little-discussed statistical detail until then: the midfielder is far from being an experienced penalty taker.
An Unlikely Taker in a Decisive Moment
According to information released by Diário do Litoral, before the penalty against Norway, Bruno Guimarães had taken only three penalties throughout his professional career in official matches — twice for Newcastle and once for Lyon. On all previous occasions, the midfielder converted the penalty, maintaining a 100% success rate before the challenge against the Norwegians.
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However, Sunday’s miss marked the first time in his career that the midfielder failed to convert a penalty. With this, Bruno Guimarães joined a not-so-enviable list of players who have missed penalty kicks for the Brazilian National Team during regular time of a match — a group that, according to Lance!, includes names like Zico and Waldemar de Brito throughout the national team’s history.
On the other hand, it is worth noting that Bruno Guimarães’ selection for the penalty was not an improvisation by coach Carlo Ancelotti. According to Diário do Grande ABC, the Italian coach himself revealed, after the elimination, that the technical committee conducted a statistical survey of an entire year of work to define the order of penalty takers for the team during the World Cup. According to Ancelotti, the result of this study pointed to Raphinha as the best taker in the squad, followed by Neymar and Igor Thiago; only after these three names did Bruno Guimarães appear, with Martinelli right after. “We chose Bruno because we understood he was the best option” among the players available on the field at that moment, stated the coach — since Raphinha was still recovering from a thigh injury and had been kept on the bench.
Why didn’t Vinicius Jr. take the penalty?
Meanwhile, much of the discussion around the incident revolved precisely around one question: why didn’t Vinicius Jr., the team’s main star and present on the field at the time of the call, take responsibility? The answer, according to Ancelotti himself, is straightforward: the Real Madrid forward wasn’t even among the top five names in the statistical survey that determined the team’s order of penalty takers. That’s exactly why, when referee Ismail Elfath awarded the penalty on Matheus Cunha, Vinicius Jr. picked up the ball — but only to fulfill a strategy increasingly common in modern football: protecting the real taker from the psychological pressure of opponents during the moments leading up to the kick.
According to Placar, the Real Madrid forward has taken 19 penalties in regular time throughout his career, converting 13 and missing six — a much more extensive record than Bruno Guimarães, although it is also far from perfect.
Moreover, Vinicius Jr. is experiencing a particularly special moment in this World Cup: the Brazilian forward is directly competing for the tournament’s top scorer, with four goals scored up to the round of 16 — just three behind Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé in the race for the golden boot. However, for the Brazilian National Team, Vinicius Jr.’s penalty record is also not flawless: he has converted only one of three attempts for the country, with two penalties missed just this year, 2026.
Even so, Vinicius Jr.’s absence in the penalty against Norway reignited the debate about what the ideal hierarchy of penalty takers within the Brazilian squad should be, especially in moments of such pressure as a World Cup round of 16 match. Therefore, even with Bruno Guimarães’ perfect record before the miss, the decision to place him ahead of a more experienced taker like Vinicius Jr. is likely to remain a topic of discussion among fans and commentators in the national team’s upcoming matches in the competition.
And you, do you believe that the statistical criterion used by Ancelotti to leave Vinícius Jr. out of the top five takers was correct, even with him being the team’s main star and on the field at the decisive moment, or should the coaching staff have reassessed this order after seeing the result on the field?
