Bruno Alves made his first Norwich City M23 appearance in a behind-closed-doors friendly against King's Lynn Town, and Norwich City won 2-0. The 20-year-old left-sided defender, signed from Cruzeiro on an initial loan with a £1.7m buy option, had been limited to Cruzeiro's youth side and the Brazil U20 side before arriving.
Alves in Norwich City yellow
Within the opening two minutes, Alves played a line-breaking pass into Oscar Schwartau and then switched the ball across field to Matej Jurasek. Those early touches gave Norwich City a first live look at the range that drew attention when he arrived in summer.
Harry Darling partnered him in yellow and green, with the exercise fitting into pre-season before competitive football begins. Norwich City are using that window to assess how quickly Alves can adapt after arriving without senior minutes behind him.
Pre-season minutes before August 8
The contrast is obvious: Alves showed quality on the ball, but he had not played a single minute of senior football before this outing. That makes every pre-season minute more valuable than a routine runout, because Norwich City are not just checking fitness; they are measuring how a player with youth-level experience handles senior pace, positioning and decisions in real time.
His opportunity is being sharpened by the wider squad picture, with Cordoba's involvement in the World Cup opening space in pre-season. Norwich City's first competitive test comes against MK Dons in the Carabao Cup on August 8, so this friendly was less about the scoreline than about whether Alves can keep making those first-pass, first-choice contributions under sharper pressure. For a player who had not yet played senior football, that is the real standard now.
