6 min readFeb 3, 2025 09:54 AM IST
First published on: Feb 3, 2025 at 09:52 AM IST
A decade and a half after he left Santos to Barcelona—in a deal so shady and complex that the Catalan club’s president resigned—Neymar returned to his childhood club as the richest footballer of his country.
His net worth, officially, is 350 million dollars. But he could not achieve what he dreamt when he set foot in Europe—to become the best player in the world. There were months he was the finest in the world, years when he was predestined to succeed the throne vacated by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, and a decade when he flirted with greatness, but without consummating the relationship.
There was an irresistible tragic, human flaw in his story. He is not quite an unfulfilled talent. He has wrought a career ordinary footballers could only dream of—glittering silverwares with Barcelona, countless trophies with PSG, highest goal-scorer for his country, numerous assists, beachside mansions and a private jet, awe and acclaim, and possibly a few more years in competitive football. He has all the riches football could bestow to its finest practitioners, from humble beginnings.
Then, he was no ordinary footballer. He was the most gifted of his generation, a blend of football as an artistic, individual expression as well as a product of regimented structure operating within a collective framework. The feet could bend the ball as he wanted it, his methods fusing magic and madness in equal measure. After his first training session, Xavi gushed that he had not watched anyone half as skilful as him in his entire career. He was hailed Messi’s heir by the man himself, and soon formed one third of the most absurdly devastating trident in football history with Messi and Luis Suarez.
At the heart of his disintegration is Neymar himself. Not because he was less gifted than Messi or Ronaldo. (Reuters)
In the Catalan capital, he found love, and he loved his fans back too. He flung them jerseys, he brought them coffees, he donated hefty sums to care-homes and orphanages. And it seemed he would one day become one of them, like the divine Argentine.
It was not to be. Vaulting human ambition skates on thin ice. The ways of the human mind are so unpredictable that it is so vulnerable to conceit and jealousy. It’s how the great rock bands have split, when each thought each could be unto oneself. Neymar cannot be faulted, because he was just as human as any footballer could be. Those in the knowhow of how his exit precipitated, hark back to a glorious night at the Parc de Princes, his future home. To the night when Neymar inspired a stirring comeback to overcome a three-goal deficit in the dying stages of the game.
It was his best night in the Barcelona shirt. He curled in a sublime free-kick into the top-corner, won and scored a penalty and composed the delivery from which Sergi Roberto toed the winning goal. Yet, it was Messi’s photograph that the websites, newspapers and social media handles splashed. Not because Messi was the game’s guiding light, but because it was Messi and because the photograph was symbolic of Messi-mania. Messi is standing on an advertising board fans are thronging beneath his feet. Messi stands with his hands raised and eyes shut skywards. Within a week, a billion people had seen the picture. It shot the photographer Santiago Garces to overnight fame.
Something snapped in Neymar. He became an increasingly self-obsessed player as the season wore on. Next season, he shocked the Barcelona faithful by signing for PSG. The lure was irrefutable. The dollars glittered. But it was not about the dollars, but the promise of liberation. From Messi, still his friend, from the rigid structures of Barcelona, from being the satellite to the sun. PSG assured he would be central to the scheme to conquer Europe. The nouveau rich could build a team around him, load players with his specification, so that he could be the lead act. He no longer needed to wait for Messi’s farewell, which in fairness seemed ridiculously impossible, to be accepted as the best player on the planet.
The stage was to be his. Yet it was not. Footballers, even the most gifted ones, are not always the best judges of finding out the working of a club. PSG’s Qatari owners wanted to build their own Galácticos, to wield their muscle before the World Cup in 2022. Kylian Mbappe and Messi would join him and soon he was no longer as central to PSG as he had thought. The trio was dysfunctional, jarring like disparate, rebelling parts, operating to different laws, whims and wavelengths.
PSG faltered in Europe, the only competition that mattered to the serial league winners. Injuries crept in, form fluctuated and Neymar was reduced to a showboating parody, football’s one-man Harlem Globetrotter. He still scored spectacular goals, made jaw-dropping moves, but he had become less of a footballer and more of a stage artiste.
At the heart of his disintegration is Neymar himself. Not because he was less gifted than Messi or Ronaldo. But he didn’t quite possess the will, devotion or discipline like them. He didn’t lose himself like the Brazilian Ronaldo into an indolent lifestyle, but seemed to have lost the drive to make the next leap into footballing immortality. Somewhere, he lost his drive and ambition. Nothing else would explain his move to the Saudi League.
He was only 30 and still in sight of greatness. Maybe, he cared only for the money. Maybe he just stopped caring for the game. Maybe, the reunion with the childhood club would rekindle the lost fire. Maybe, he never fully fathomed his gifts. Maybe, there could be one more season of spring left in those twinkling feet. But Neymar would remain the prince that never became the king, when he had the potential to be an emperor. Or a footballer prone to human frailties, as any human could be.
There were months Neymar was the finest in the world, years when he was predestined to succeed the throne vacated by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, and a decade when he flirted with greatness. (AP Photo) 
At the heart of his disintegration is Neymar himself. Not because he was less gifted than Messi or Ronaldo. (Reuters)
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