Mateusz "Kafunes" Nunes: Play right back?

Матеуш Нунеш не надто хотів грати на позиції правого захисника. Якщо бути точнішим, він просто не хотів там грати. "I talked to a lot of people. I have a psychologist. I talked to my friends. I kept telling them: "I'm not a right defender, I'm not a right defender." And they always answered: "No, but you play very well there. Very good." Teammates Bernardo Silva and Ruben Dias also kept getting me. They were sitting in my head all the time: "You played well there, you played well. You have to accept it." And I say: "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." And so constantly. But at some point you just have to start listening to what others are saying. You can't deny it all your life. Otherwise, you can lose your chance. If I had done that, I would have lost him." Nunesh, as usual, is in a great mood. He sits in a conference hall near Seoul's Gyeongbokgung Palace, which has stood here since 1395. Manchester City came to the capital of South Korea to continue their preparations for the new season. The team is greeted by abnormal heat, and Nunes, sitting in a chair, admits with a tired smile: "It's so hot here." Even the short journey from the car to the hotel is enough to make a professional football player sweat. Over the course of 30 minutes, Nunez talks about his role as the main joker in the City dressing room, shares details of the internal atmosphere in the team and recalls Pep Guardiola's parting words. But most of all, he talks about how he became one of the most important players of the team and gradually accepted his new position. Back in April, City's head coach at the time, Guardiola, said: "Mateush Nunes is becoming one of the best right-backs in the world." The Catalan has repeatedly allowed himself somewhat exaggerated compliments to the address of the 27-year-old player of the national team of Portugal, but this time his words, it seems, are not so far from the truth. "Honestly, if I hadn't changed my attitude, I would never have played well there, and he would never have said anything like that," Nunes says. But for this I first had to believe in myself. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to cope. I think that was the most important thing for me - to change my mindset and believe that I can really become what Guardiola called me." To understand how Nunes has progressed in recent seasons, you have to go back to the beginning. He moved from Wolverhampton in August 2023. Manchester City expected that the nature of the game would change in the Premier League, and that the team would increasingly need footballers capable of working a lot and dynamically in the center of the field. Guardiola hailed him as one of the best players in the world when Manchester City faced Sporting in 2021. But when Nunesh was asked about these words a few years later, he just laughed: "No." City's move to a more dynamic midfield game has been well justified, as evidenced by the summer signing of Elliott Anderson. However, Nunes is no longer part of that process. One of Guardiola's most famous lines about the Portuguese was that he allegedly "lacks the composure and composure" to play in midfield. "That's not what he meant," Nunes said. "He talked to me the next day and explained that he meant something completely different. He said that in tight spaces -- like playing Bernardo -- sometimes I wasn't careful enough with the ball. Not that I lacked intelligence. He said he would never say something like that. He just hasn't had a chance to explain it publicly, so of course people don't know about it. But I don't think that a football player who lacks football intelligence would be able to play in as many different positions as I do, and also show himself well in them." Amid City's worst season in Guardiola's decade - a disastrous 2024/25 campaign that saw the team win just 11 of 31 games between October and March, after four successive Premier League titles - Nunez was at times featured on the left wing. And before Christmas, he was released as a left-back in the Manchester derby against Manchester United. Neither team had their best game, but City were on the verge of a psychologically important 1-0 victory when Nunes was fouled in the penalty area and awarded a penalty. In the 88th minute, this led to Amadou's goal, and two minutes later he escaped Nunes and scored the winner. "I won't lie. It was probably the most difficult match for me personally," he admits