Murillo – the most watchable centre-back in modern football

New York Times

21-03-2025

It was coming to the end of the night and, as the television cameras panned towards the dugout, a fire was smouldering behind Murillo's eyes.
He had wanted to play. He had wanted to make his debut and demonstrate why, at the highest level of the sport, so many observers believe he could be an ideal wearer of Brazil's colours.
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But the signal never came. Brazil used seven substitutes in their 2-1 defeat of Colombia and Murillo, still uncapped, was not among them.
Maybe he will get his chance when they face Argentina in Buenos Aires on Wednesday. Or maybe he will have to wait until the next set of World Cup qualifiers in June.
All that can really be said with certainty, if you have been following his progress with Nottingham Forest, is that there are all sorts of reasons to believe that, when he does get his chance, the fans of Selecao will quickly learn to embrace him.
Let's face it, Murillo Santiago Costa dos Santos is not your ordinary centre-back. Players in that position are not usually described in match reports as 'thrilling' or 'audacious'. As a fan, you would not ordinarily want the ball at the centre-back's feet.
With Murillo, however, there is always that surge of excitement that something brilliant and unorthodox might happen. He might go on a run. He might see a pass that nobody else has seen, then play it with laser precision. He might, if the mood takes him, charm down the birds from the eaves of the stadium.
More than anything, the 22-year-old from Sao Paulo — the state with Pele, Kaka, Neymar, Cafu, Roberto Carlos and many others on its production line — seems absolutely committed to the popular theory that the people of his country have a responsibility to produce some of the most uplifting passages of play ever seen on a football field.
James Lawton, the distinguished sports writer, once observed that Brazil's record haul of five World Cups was 'no more than the most basic evidence that their game will always be, in its brilliance and willingness to take risks, quite separate from the aspirations of every rival'.
And that, in a nutshell, is how Murillo plays: flicks and feints, beautifully skimmed passes, a level of skill way beyond what is usually expected for a player in his position and, at the heart of everything, the innate self-belief that will be essential if he is to become one of the sport's genuine A-listers.
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'My goal is to achieve something that nobody has ever done,' Murillo said recently on Sky Sports' The Big Interview. 'There is a quote that says, 'If someone does something, I'll do it too. And if nobody has, I'll be the first to do it'. I try to leave my mark wherever I go.'
This includes his first few weeks in English football when, on only his second appearance for Forest, he swerved and slalomed through a maze of Crystal Palace players in an apparent attempt to join David Beckham, Tony Yeboah and Dalian Atkinson among the scorers of Selhurst Park's greatest-ever goals.
'It's John Barnes here, jinking through the middle,' was Alan Smith's verdict on co-commentary duties for Sky. 'This is a centre-half we're looking at — but he is Brazilian, isn't he?'
"It's John Barnes here jinking through the middle!" A silky solo run from Murillo but just couldn't find the finish! 😲 pic.twitter.com/N9fbdM0uLp
Those surging runs have become a common sight for regular Forest-watchers as part of the showreel that earned Murillo the club's player-of-the-year award last season and makes him a realistic contender to do the same again this year.
Perhaps you remember the game at Tottenham Hotspur when he found himself in the left-back position and, Murillo being Murillo, decided to try a shot from a distance — 72.6 yards — further out than any player has ever scored in the Premier League.
His shot caught the Spurs goalkeeper, Guglielmo Vicario, off his line, only to drop a yard or so wide of the post. But so did Pele's attempt (from considerably closer) against Czechoslovakia in the 1970 World Cup and that never stopped people eulogising about it for the next half a century.
Who dares take on that kind of shot? Or, rather, how many players in Murillo's position would ever have the wit and gumption to try to pull it off?
Murillo was 🤏 this close 🤏 to scoring the longest Premier League goal ever recorded by an outfield player…His incredible attempt for @NFFC against Spurs was from 72.6 yards out! pic.twitter.com/py91v1PNi6
None of this would matter greatly if Murillo did not fully comprehend that the priority for a centre-back is to keep out the opposition. But here's the thing: he has also proven himself to be an elite performer on that front, too. He has it all: speed, balance, timing, anticipation and the crucial ability for any defender to read danger and know exactly what to do about it.
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Yes, there are occasional moments when he commits himself too early to a tackle. He is decent in the air at 6ft (184cm), without being exceptional, and it helps immeasurably that he has the towering presence of Nikola Milenkovic, a 6ft 4in Serbia international, alongside him, with his buzz cut, bulging biceps and a look in his eyes that tells opponents: Do Not Disturb.
For the most part, however, Murillo fully justifies the modern reincarnation of the 'You'll never beat Des Walker' song that used to be heard at Forest matches in the 1980s and 1990s whenever the England international accelerated through the gears to nip the ball off an opposition player.
Murillo's name has been attached to that song since his first few months in Nottingham and one game in particular when West Ham United were the opposition at the City Ground. Michail Antonio broke away on the left wing with a clear, diagonal run towards goal.
Antonio was quick, but Murillo was quicker. His speed of thought was rapid, too. And this kid, lest it be forgotten, was still a rookie, signed from Corinthians after only 27 games with the Brazilian club.
Antonio had years of experience and know-how in his favour. But Murillo got back, held him up and then took the ball off his opponent with a standing tackle that was so clean, so exquisitely timed and perfect in every way, you half-expected Antonio to join in the applause himself.
Since then, some of the finest strikers in the Premier League have encountered the same. It happened to Joao Pedro in a game against Brighton & Hove Albion, running clear only for Murillo to appear out of nowhere with a perfectly timed tackle. Or think back to the 1-1 draw against Liverpool in January when Luis Diaz ran free on a counter-attack and, again, Murillo popped up to save his team.
At Forest, the crowd love him for his skill, his boyish grin, his inexplicable XXXXL shorts (nobody in professional football surely wears them bigger) and the precious magic that saw him, in a recent FA Cup tie against Ipswich Town, perform a swivelling, penalty-area dragback and, in turn, being hailed by ITV's Seb Hutchinson as 'the most watchable centre-half around'.
Mostly, the crowd at Forest love him for the fact that, despite everything, he is still theirs.
Chelsea have tried to sign him. Atletico Madrid were sniffing. All the big hitters have been looking and, in those circumstances, Forest fans know from bitter experience what usually happens: the player leaves for greater adventures elsewhere.
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Now, though, Murillo is part of a team that have been enjoying the view from third place in the Premier League since December and, with nine games to go, remain on course to pull off one of the more remarkable Champions League qualifications.
Murillo had been identified this time last year as the player who would most likely have to be sold for Forest to avoid another charge, and points deduction, for breaching Premier League spending rules.
Instead, Forest navigated a way through the accounts by flogging Orel Mangala and Moussa Niakhate to Lyon for a combined £50million ($65m at current rates) and arranging an even more spectacular deal with Newcastle United that valued a third-choice goalkeeper, Odysseas Vlachodimos, at around £20million. Murillo remained in Nottingham, signed a new four-and-a-half-year contract in January and can probably feel a little aggrieved that he has not already become the first player in their 160-year history to play for Brazil.
Murillo 🇧🇷🔥#ITVFootball | #EmiratesFACup pic.twitter.com/PEv7Ir6v1O
Sometimes, in football, there is a tendency to over-romanticise Brazilian football as exotic and otherworldly and, as the author David Goldblatt wrote in Futebol Nation, the fact that 'very few Brazilian phrases have entered the global lingua franca like O Jojo Bonito' — 'the beautiful game'.
It is not always like that. Brazilians can kick and clog and spite and swindle as well as any South American (or European) team. It is not all about free-flowing football, fancy tricks and dazzling footwork. 'There's no beautiful game any more,' Luiz Felipe Scolari said in 2001 as their national team manager. 'You are not going to see the Brazil of '58, '62 or '70.'
Yet Murillo, born a year after Scolari uttered those words, remains defiantly committed to his understanding of the meaning of Brazilian football.
He played futsal until the age of 16, honing his skills in small-sided matches. After watching one of his heroes, Ronaldo, score a wonder goal, he decided that Corinthians were the team for him (he had initially been a fan of Sao Paulo).
When Murillo arrived in Nottingham in August 2023, the deal cost just over £10million and Forest's manager at the time, Steve Cooper, warned him it might take three months before he was ready to handle the physical demands of the Premier League.
Murillo listened, took it in and nodded. Inside, though, he was boiling up. 'Three months?' he thought. 'No way I'm waiting three months.' He hired a personal trainer and was in the starting line-up within four weeks. From that day onwards, he has been an automatic starter.
With Brazil, however, the centre-half positions are occupied by two more experienced players, both also from Sao Paulo. Marquinhos, of Paris Saint-Germain, fills one position and the other — the left-sided role that Murillo plays for Forest — is taken up by Arsenal's Gabriel, a very different type of player.
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Their latest World Cup qualifier ended happily but it was only a deflected goal from Vinicius Junior, nine minutes into stoppage time, that spared the players an entirely different kind of crowd reaction inside Brasilia's Mane Garrincha stadium. This is not a vintage Brazil team, or even close.
And Murillo? His time will come. He will just have to be patient — and so will all those people who see the fun he brings to a football field, his silky touches and his eye for the spectacular and would like to imagine that a player with these gifts could help Brazil rediscover some of the old joys.