Guillermo Varela

Guillermo Varela had a stand-off with manager Louis van Gaal, who refused to let him leave.

Varela had started out at Peñarol in Uruguay, making his debut in 2011, and returned there in 2017 for a second spell that brought back-to-back league titles in 2017 and 2018 and a domestic Super Cup.

His time at Dynamo Moscow, which began as a loan in 2020 before the Russian club bought his rights the following year, ended abruptly in July 2022, when Varela left the team's training base without notice, a departure the club treated as a breach of contract.

Flamengo took him on loan that same month, and the move to Rio de Janeiro reshaped his career. Varela won the Copa Libertadores in 2022 while still on loan, then signed permanently in 2023 and kept adding trophies: the Copa do Brasil in 2024, the Rio de Janeiro state championship in both 2024 and 2025, and in 2025 alone the Brazilian Super Cup, the national championship, a second Libertadores, the FIFA Challenger Cup and the FIFA Derby of the Americas.

He has also won 31 caps for Uruguay, without scoring, and was part of the squad that took bronze at the 2024 Copa América. Earlier, he played 29 times for the under-20 side that finished runners-up at the 2013 World Cup.