Eight months ago, Neymar scored one of the greatest individual goals in football history.
Just before half-time in extra time in Brazil’s quarter-final against Croatia in Doha, with the score at 0-0 and neither side creating chances, Neymar collected the ball with practically every Croatia player between himself and the opposition goal. After steadying himself and assessing the situation, Neymar managed to beat Croatia’s midfield with a one-two and then beat Croatia’s defence with another one-two, then rounded the goalkeeper and fired into an empty net.
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It was extraordinary. In seven seconds and using just five touches, a single player had waltzed through an entire team. You simply don’t see goals like that these days. The great individual World Cup goals are from a bygone era, with grainy footage of immobile defenders, rather than against ultra-compact blocks in HD.
No one really spoke about the brilliance of the goal. Its legacy wasn’t helped, of course, by the fact Brazil subsequently conceded an equaliser and exited on penalties.
But there’s also a wilful refusal to give due credit to Neymar. The Brazilian can be a frustrating player on the pitch and is, for various reasons, difficult to warm to away from it. But Neymar deserves more credit, particularly in light of his surpassing Pele’s long-standing Brazil 77-goal record on Friday night. Neymar scored twice in a 5-1 win over Bolivia in Belem, taking his tally for the national team to 79.
He should be considered one of the greats.
That will probably be considered a controversial view, especially considering he’s opting to take semi-retirement in Saudi Arabia. He’s often considered an unfulfilled talent, partly a recognition of his outlandish ability, obvious from his formative days with Santos.
But it also rather overlooks the evidence. There’s that Brazil goalscoring record. There’s the fact Neymar is one of only 13 players to have won the Copa Libertadores and the Champions League — and he’s the only one of those 13 to score in both finals. And Neymar’s career in Europe, while not perfect, probably surpasses anything achieved by any other Brazilian forward.
It’s worth drawing a comparison to Neymar’s predecessors. Four other Brazilian attackers of this century have been regarded as true superstars: Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho and Kaka. None sustained quality in Europe for as long as Neymar.
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Any criticism of “the original” Ronaldo is considered sacrilegious, in part because of his injury problems. This is a player who won a single league title in 14 years of European football. Ronaldo only got to one Champions League semi-final, and never reached a final. His outstanding club season, with Barcelona in 1996-97, actually ended with the fans desperately wanting him out.
Rivaldo’s top-level European career lasted only five years, with Deportivo and then Barcelona. He was poor in his final season at Camp Nou, and in an unremarkable stint with Milan was surplus to requirements. At a lower level, Rivaldo played into his forties but was only world-class until about 31.
Ronaldinho was pretty much done by 28 after a sensational half-decade spell of brilliance, although he deserves credit for his swansong with Atletico Mineiro, leading them to the Copa Libertadores in 2013.
And then there’s Kaka, briefly the world’s outstanding footballer. However, upon his move to Real Madrid at the age of 27, he badly lost his way, struggled to find a place in the team, and ended up in MLS at 32.
So, without wanting to discredit every Brazilian superstar to have pitched up in Europe, Neymar’s 10-year stint is actually very impressive in comparison to the greats. Yes, he took a while to get going at Barcelona and his years at PSG were punctuated by injuries, but Neymar has performed to a consistently high level and his performance towards the end of Barcelona’s miraculous 6-1 “Remontada” victory over PSG, to overturn a 4-0 first leg deficit, is the stuff of legend.
He scored a free kick to make it 4-1, calmly scored a penalty to make it 5-1, then assisted the winner for Sergi Roberto to make it 6-1.
He has never endured a serious slump to rival anything suffered by the aforementioned four Brazilians. Or, for that matter — looking at past Ballon d’Or winners — nothing like the poor form experienced by Zinedine Zidane for 18 months after World Cup 1998, or Andriy Shevchenko after his big-money move to Chelsea, or Michael Owen for the second half of his career.
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Tim Vickery, the respected South American football journalist, once observed that Brazilian players tend to care deeply about only two sides: their first club and the national side. For them, European club football is about proving themselves at the highest level and earning money, but their mentality is largely geared towards preparing themselves for major international tournaments.
And, in World Cups, Neymar has always turned up. He dealt excellently with the enormous pressure placed upon him on home soil in 2014. Everyone remembers the way Brazil self-destructed without him in the semi-final against Germany, overcome with nerves and emotion. But that wasn’t Neymar’s fault and it’s rather forgotten that Brazil’s star was kicked — or, rather, kneed — out of the tournament by a terrible foul from Colombia defender Juan Zuniga. (Equally, it should be noted that the ultra-physical style of that game was imposed by Brazil, who accepted they couldn’t outplay a marvellous Colombian side and resorted to foul tactics.)
In 2018, Neymar was quieter in terms of dominating Brazil’s play but did provide decisive moments, particularly when almost single-handedly winning the second-round game against Mexico, a 2-0 victory thanks to Neymar’s opener, a tap-in after his backheel had released Willian, then his assist for Roberto Firmino’s clincher. Brazil were eliminated at the quarter-final stage after a narrow 2-1 defeat by Belgium in a superb game. Neymar’s curler from the edge of the box in stoppage time forced probably the save of the tournament by Thibaut Courtois.
In 2022, while affected by injury at the start of the competition, Neymar provided that outstanding moment against Croatia before his team-mates left the back door open and Croatia equalised. Neymar had indicated that would be his last World Cup and his inability to triumph will be held against him, but Neymar wasn’t the reason Brazil have failed to win the World Cup in his time, the same way it wasn’t Zico’s fault he never won it either.
Besides, Neymar did taste success on home soil when, as captain, he scored the winning penalty to crown Brazil Olympic champions for the first time in 2016. He’d also scored in the quarter-final, semi-final and final. To European observers, the Olympic football tournament is an afterthought, but Brazil’s inability to win it had previously been considered a major story in South America.
Neymar’s transfer to PSG in 2017 is held up as the moment where he got things wrong. It was a move to a lesser league, certainly, but then Barcelona were slowly becoming more and more shambolic and Neymar was moving to the most ambitious club in European football to be the main man — this was shortly before Kylian Mbappe signed — and it was a chance to dominate a top side rather than play second fiddle to Messi at Barcelona.
Maybe it was, on the whole, a little underwhelming, but then success and failure come down to small margins. PSG lost the 2020 Champions League final to Bayern 1-0, but they’d been the better side until Kingsley Coman’s winner and only a desperate Manuel Neuer save with his trailing leg prevented Neymar from sliding home what would have been a deserved PSG opener. After Messi’s arrival, PSG became too top-heavy and their forwards’ lack of defensive discipline became a running joke — or, rather, a non-running joke – but, of the three, Neymar was far more likely to put in a shift and put in some tackles than Messi or Mbappe.
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Really, Neymar’s greatest issue is being the anointed the ‘next superstar’ in the era immediately after Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. It’s an unfair comparison. Not only were their peaks so incredibly high, their longevity has been staggering. They are complete outliers compared to almost every other great player in history, including the four aforementioned Brazilian attackers. Neymar twice finished in third place behind them in the Ballon d’Or, in 2015 and 2017.
Granted, the comparison between Neymar and others of his generation are unflattering because Robert Lewandowski and Karim Benzema peaked in their thirties, while Neymar’s career is set to tail off in Saudi Arabia. Then again, Neymar’s brilliance started earlier: he was winning the Copa Libertadores and was crowned the best player in South America when he was 19. At the same age, Lewandowski was still in the Polish second division.
Everyone will have their own opinion on Neymar’s career, of course, and maybe he could have been better. Then again, when you compare his career with that of the hotly-tipped Ganso, who emerged from Santos at the same time, you realise quite what Neymar has achieved. Ganso earned just eight caps and made only 30 league appearances in Europe. He, rather than Neymar, is the ‘what might have been’ player.
But the idea that Neymar wasted his talent is deeply unfair and some of that criticism feels almost like triumphalism — a competition to see who has loftier standards of what constitutes a true great. Brazil’s all-time record goalscorer and the only man who has scored in Champions League and Copa Libertadores finals should be remembered as one of the best the game has seen.
(Top photo: Carl de Souza/AFP via Getty Images)
