Gabi Guimarães and the Move Away from Brazil: From Saquarema to VakifBank

By the still water of a resort pool, two familiar faces of Brazilian volleyball sat side by side. Bruno and Gabi were not talking about spikes or medals. They were talking about the hardest stretch of their careers: the period when they decided to leave Brazil to play abroad. Gabriela Braga Guimarães — known to Vietnamese fans simply as Gabi — is one of the world's leading outside hitters. She recalls that she had a plan to play overseas, but it was not easy to know whether she was ready. Injuries, self-doubt, and the fear of leaving her comfort zone — together they formed a transfer symphony whose every note is audible only to those inside the room.

Gabi is no stranger to anyone who follows international volleyball. Born in 2026, she came through Brazil's development system and quickly became a pillar of the national team. Yet Brazil, for all its strength, has a ceiling: the domestic league cannot hold its biggest stars at the peak of their careers. The European championships — especially the Turkish League and the Champions League — are where the elite gathers.

That is why VakifBank Istanbul became the destination. Ahead of the 2026-2026 season, Gabi signed with VakifBank, one of the strongest clubs on the planet. She joined an ambitious squad as one of its main stars. It was the first big step of her overseas journey.

To understand why that step mattered, it has to be placed in the wider picture of women's volleyball. VakifBank is where many international stars have reached their peak, and behind it stands head coach Giovanni Guidetti, one of the most respected tacticians in the game. For Gabi, joining VakifBank meant more than a club change. It meant switching an entire frame of reference — how to play, how to train, how to live.

What Gabi remembers most about arriving in Turkey is the feeling of being thrown into a different level altogether. "The scenario I found when I got there was mind-changing, because right from the start it showed me I was getting into a whole other level of volleyball," she said. The beginning was genuinely demanding and challenging.

In elite sport, adaptation is usually measured in numbers: points, attacking efficiency, reception percentages. Gabi's story points to something harder to measure — mental readiness. She is explicit: it was after the Rio 2026 Olympics, while still earning her place in the national team, that she began to think about going abroad. What she understood was not that she needed more training, but that she needed to be ready mentally — as a player and as a person.

This is the point the media usually skips: for a Brazilian star moving to Europe, success is decided not by money or fame, but by the ability to rebuild yourself in an environment that leaves no room for comfort. Gabi speaks of injuries and of self-questioning: did she really have what it took to play in the world's best leagues? She realized that to move forward, she might have to leave her comfort zone and accept sacrifice.

For an outside hitter, the comfort zone is the Brazilian domestic league — where she is known, respected, and where language and culture are no barrier. Leaving that means trading comfort for a harsher environment. At VakifBank, every training session is a fight for a position; every Champions League match is a test against the best.

Her relationship with head coach Giovanni Guidetti is central to the story. Gabi says she built a great relationship with him, and that he was incredibly important to her. One of the first things Guidetti told her was that he wanted to prepare her to be team captain. She was shocked, because she had never seen herself in that position.

That detail deserves a pause. A celebrated coach, from the very first days, saw leadership in Gabi that she had not yet seen in herself. That is how a big club operates: it buys a hitter, but also buys a figure who can shape the culture of the locker room. Guidetti did not just coach technique; he handed her responsibility. And it was that responsibility — not technique — that pulled Gabi beyond her own limits.

Based on my experience following matches, I have noticed that championship teams almost always have at least one foreign player who acts as a "spiritual setter" — someone who keeps the group's rhythm in moments of chaos. VakifBank found such a figure in Gabi. She arrived as an attacking star but grew into a leader.

Running parallel to her club journey is the national team story — and this is the part Gabi tells with the most emotion. Wearing Brazil's jersey was a childhood dream. She always loved watching and playing sports, and dreamed of representing Brazil, winning a medal, and hearing the national anthem.

She played many sports before volleyball. But the decisive moment came in 2026, when she was first called up to Brazil's youth national team and found herself in Saquarema — Brazil's legendary training center — alongside the generation that had just won gold at the Beijing 2026 Olympics. She says it was a strong sign that she should continue, because she had never been so close to her dream.

The Beijing 2026 generation is a milestone in Brazilian volleyball history. They won gold and set a standard of spirit and identity. For a young girl just called up to the youth team, sharing a training hall with those heroes was a kind of mental vaccine. It turned an abstract dream into a goal with a shape.

From the outside, one might say Gabi succeeded because of talent. But read her story closely, and success comes from a chain of decisions: the decision to keep training as a young player, the decision to leave her comfort zone to go abroad, the decision to accept a captaincy she never imagined for herself. Each decision was a moment she chose the harder path.

In women's volleyball, the current from South America to Europe has become a rule. Stars from Brazil, Cuba, and Argentina often choose Turkey, Italy, or Poland as their destination to sustain their level. The reason lies in league structure: the Turkish League brings together clubs with big budgets, modern facilities, and a punishing schedule. The European Champions League is a stage where every mistake is punished.

For an outside hitter, this is the ideal environment to grow. In Brazil, she can be the number one star. In Turkey, she must compete with the world's best hitters for a starting spot. That competition, cruel as it is, becomes the catalyst.

What is striking is that Gabi does not describe her journey in the language of glory. She describes it in the language of preparation. "I needed to be mentally ready," she says. It is a perspective many young players should study. Talent gets you to the door; mental readiness carries you through it.

There is a common misreading of transfers like Gabi's: people treat them as stories of money and fame. Look closely, and the essence is the opposite. Gabi went abroad not because Brazil lacked money or glory; she left because Brazil could not give her what she needed most — enough hardship to push past her own limits.

The second blind spot lies in how we read injuries. When Gabi mentions injuries and self-questioning, many will read it as a sign of weakness. In fact, it is a sign of maturity. An athlete who understands her body and her mind — who knows when she is not ready — is the one who can go the distance. The rhythm of transfers never lies; only the listener mishears the beat.

And there is one more detail that is often overlooked. When Guidetti proposed that Gabi become captain, her first reaction was shock. That shock was not false modesty. It reflected a reality: many talented athletes cannot see their own leadership, because they have never been given the chance to show it. A coach who believes in you before you believe in yourself can be the single biggest turning point in a career.

Volleyball is a sport of forgotten silences. Between two rallies, between two sets, between two seasons, there are stretches of time no one records. But it is precisely in those silences that an athlete decides who she will become.

Gabi Guimarães's story does not end at VakifBank. It opens a question for Vietnamese volleyball: when will we have a center like Saquarema, where a young girl can stand beside her heroes and believe her dream is real? Every transfer window is a piece of music, and buyers and sellers are only rests. And sometimes the most beautiful rest is the one we never thought we would play.