Neymar turns 29 in a few weeks. He should be at his peak as he enters a crucial two years of his career, starting with the shaking of his latest injury and ending with the 2022 World Cup and, with Brazil hopes to rest on his shoulders, sixth title.
These two years will do much to establish its place in the pantheon of the game, although winning the World Cup and the Champions League is not the only goal. The time of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo is coming to an end. The throne of the best player in the world is up for grabs and Robert Lewandowski is unlikely to be a 32-year-old longtime candidate. With some steps, almost certainly involving his own, Neymar’s role will have been short of potential if he cannot claim the honor for himself.
Some will certainly (and understandably) see this as an insult, a silly trap of paying too much attention to an individual’s personal reward in team sports. But Neymar is from Brazil and as such, he grew up with the idea of the best player award as something of a national right. Romario, Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho, Kaka: the outstanding Brazilian player seemed to be seen as the best in the world.
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It may be true that the question for claiming this award proves to be fruitful, that there are times when it puts too much emphasis on shining. That certainly featured in last year’s Champions League final, the biggest game he ever played. It was amazing from the moment Bayern Munich scored their goal, Neymar ‘s game fell through. Paris Saint-Germain couldn’t help it out of a 1-0 hole and, against emergency, couldn’t do the simple things to keep the ball going. He looked like an overweight man, and the events of the last few days may have pushed up another weight.
Neymar’s obvious criticism after the Champions League final was that he looked like an overweight man, but when it came to pushing to shoot, he was still coming across as a youngster. In the months that followed, the report moved on to a new phenomenon: the adult Neymar. He was said to have grasped a hard, but undeniable fact: his career was over and time had made a difference. He was also widely praised for his leadership role as PSG and Istanbul Basaksehir walked out of their Champions League war in December following allegations of racism.
As Fernando Kallas, a Spanish journalist based in Spain, put it in a recent social media post: “This week I was full of praise for Neymar ‘s maturity, the position he took against racism and how his image here in Europe is getting better. “Kallas ended the post with an emoji of a hand slapping his head – a visual acknowledgment that he had spoken too early about the star’s future.
The reason? The controversial performances that Neymar is said to have held over five days between Christmas and the New Year. The Brazilian media reported that he was hosting a party for 500 people (they thought the presence was said to have been recorded at 150) at his building in Mangaratiba, on the coast of Rio de Janeiro, in central a pandemic coronavirus infection that has been particularly severe in Brazil. After relief, the daily death toll in Brazil will once again be around the 1,000 mark, and soon the total grim figure will exceed 200,000. These are not times for a big party; even traditional New Year’s Eve celebrations have been canceled across the country due to concerns about public safety.
They were answered quickly. “It doesn’t matter if the party has 500 or 150,” wrote SporTV journalist Mauricio Noriega, “What speaks louder is the opinion of someone who reports Michael Jackson’s football, stuck in Neverland, isolated from the outside world and living like a star-studded youth. “
There may be an added bitterness in his words as Noriega was another man whom Neymar recently suggested. “I came over as a sucker a few days ago,” he noted, “when I wrote that he had released himself as an athlete and as a man when he participated in the complaints “after walking out Champions League.
Midfielder Ze Elias, who spent ten years in Europe, saw a similar note to the ESPN TV channel in Brazil.
“Neymar is the product of an environment created for him from the beginning – the mind of ‘This child is a star, let him do what he wants.’ He grew up like that, ‘ he’s getting used to it and nobody’s stopping him. ” Reflecting on the internal influences, he said “this is why Brazil is never seen as a bad country.” There has been criticism from former TV presenter Galvao Bueno, and Walter Casagrande, who as a star, that Neymar is “still small in the things that matter.”
If Neymar wants to grow into the shoes of the best player in the world, he now has to make it carry heavier loads. There is more pressure now. It’s harder for those who want to defend it, and those who are trying to attack it have an extra reason. And hopefully the coronavirus death toll will not be left unaffected by anything that happened in Mangaratiba.