Bruno Guimaraes now shares which sport he could have been competing in if it wasn't football

Footballers do often seem to have extra sporting talents - look at Hatem Ben Arfa, now a ranked Padel player.

So many sports personalities have stories of when they were young competing in different sports before landing on the one that made them famous and it seems that Bruno Guimaraes is one such sports personality.

In a recent Ask Me Anything with the Premier League, the Newcastle United number 39 revealed that had his mother got her way, Bruno would have won an Olympic medal in a different sport to the one he won gold with Brazil, which was obviously football.

Bruno's mother wanted a different path for him

Bruno says that in his first game of football, he got hit in the face with the ball and his mother tried to wrap him in cotton wool and put him on to a non-contact sport.

That sport was ,,, swimming!

Bruno admits to still being a strong swimmer but does say he's much better at football.

How different things could have been

"I did well, I'm not so good as I am at football. I like to swim a lot."

We almost missed out on having one of the best players ever to wear the black and white because his mother didn't want to see him get his pretty face hurt. Understandable I suppose.

There's probably some joke to be made about diving here, but it's Bruno Guimaraes, not Bruno Fernandes. WAHAY!