Matheus Cunha believes the combination of signing for Manchester United in the summer and playing for Brazil represents a “spectacular personal moment”, and that’s just one of the worrying admissions he made while on international duty.
Cunha joined United for £62.5m in the summer on the back of 15 goals and six assists in an outstanding 2024/2025 season for Wolves. But he’s yet to score or assist in seven games for his new club and was dropped to the bench by Ruben Amorim for the 2-0 win over Sunderland last time, with his replacement, Mason Mount, scoring and impressing in his stead.
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The Brazilian will be well aware of the number of quality players who have been signed by United for similarly hefty fees and failed to live up to expectations, and appears to already be feeling the stress.
After leading the Selecao line in their 5-0 win over South Korea on Friday, Cunha admitted it feels as though he’s been at United for far longer than a couple of months amid his and his teammates’ struggle to pick up the positive results required to keep Ruben Amorim in the job.
“I try as much as possible to adapt, to learn… it’s only been two months,” he said. “But it feels like I’ve been here for a long time because of the club’s current situation.”
Christ, imagine how Luke Shaw feels.
And Cunha is also falling into the familiar Old Trafford trap of ramping up the pressure on himself as a player signed for big money to right the United wrongs.
He added: “I have to get results as quickly as possible because I’m a [big] signing… all of this helps a lot to find the adaptation faster and feel as good as possible in the national team.”
But perhaps most worrying of all, and this has been a criticism aimed at innumerable United stars for over a decade since Sir Alex Ferguson left the club, is Cunha’s belief that he has ‘arrived’.
“We live in a constant search for something. Even though a difficult moment when you’re pursuing a dream and encountering some obstacles leaves you feeling a bit lost,” he added.
“You want to understand, and despite having so much, you don’t feel fulfilled by what you’ve achieved.
“You have to constantly remember where you came from to understand where you’ve arrived.
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“What I was searching for as a person more than anything else, I’m slowly finding. You constantly want to improve. That’s innate in human nature, but I can’t help but stop and enjoy this moment.
“Feeling privileged to wear the jersey of the greatest national team in the world, one of the greatest clubs in the world… it’s a spectacular personal moment.
“I have an incredible family, another little girl now, everyone is doing well and feeling healthy. I’m enjoying all of this in a positive way.”
All too many players have seen United as an end-game; the point at which they’ve ‘completed football’. And while that was previously because it was the club where trophies were won, it’s more recently been the location to accumulate wealth while resting on laurels.
