wWhen Neymar was 18, he made his debut for Brazil as part of a revamp of the national team following the 2010 World Cup disappointment in South Africa. At the time, Lionel Messi was 23, obviously a star, and Brazil had to be his equal. Neymar has been trying to escape the Argentine’s shadow ever since.
Even the news that Carlo Ancelotti has included Neymar in his squad for the upcoming World Cup feels like a desperate attempt to recreate the kind of story Messi has enjoyed in previous finals: the last dance long after the body has weakened. Messi was then 35 years old; Neymar is now 34 years old. But there are not many similarities in the cases.
There was a feeling from the beginning that Brazil needed a Messi for themselves and this created a culture of dependency that was not helpful to anyone. Neymar is a player who delights some and frustrates others, a vessel into which competing factions insert their narratives; It is easy for a person to get lost. There is an overlooked poignancy to Neymar’s story; A potentially great man who was never allowed to be himself, whose essence never exactly matched the image.
Following Brazil’s defeat by Belgium in the 2018 World Cup quarter-finals, Neymar stood alone near the team bus in the stadium car park in Kazan, in front of a giant LED screen, head bowed, shoulders hunched under the weight of expectation. He was only 26 years old but even then it seemed as if his best chance to win the World Cup was gone.
It was not his fault that Brazil lost and yet it was his presence that created a tactical flaw which Roberto Martínez took advantage of, moving Romelu Lukaku to the right so that he could attack deep into Brazil’s soft left flank every time Belgium gained possession. The friendly Neymar demanded compensatory changes in midfield but there was no Brazilian Rodrigo de Paul and as a result an unbalanced Brazil lost.
Since the 2011 Copa America, this has always been the problem, emotionally if not tactically. After leading Santos to the Copa Libertadores, Neymar arrived in Argentina on a wave of hype, which lasted until he clashed with Venezuelan right-back Roberto Rosales. What Rosales started culminated in two bouts with Paraguay’s Dario Veron. Brazil lost in the quarter-finals and the message soon spread around: Neymar really didn’t like it when opponents outclassed him.
So the defenders kicked him and Neymar started anticipating contact, exaggerating, feinting and diving. For much of the 2010s, Neymar’s bullying and his pre-emptive steals were football’s most annoying arms race. Some defenders concluded that you might as well suppress him since he was going down screaming anyway.
This culminated in the brutal quarter-final of the 2014 World Cup, in which Brazil defeated Colombia, but Neymar suffered a broken spine after Juan Camilo Zuniga’s knee to the back. The challenge was almost certainly clumsy or overzealous rather than malicious, but Neymar’s situation was such that Zuniga found himself censured by the Brazilian Football Federation and the subject of hate campaigns on social media.
The next morning the atmosphere in Rio de Janeiro was extremely calm, as if after a major national disaster. It’s not impossible that Brazil could have been more tactically coherent without him, but there was a nagging doubt: how could they beat Germany in the semi-finals without this player who was so hyped? Without the Messiah, what will happen to His chosen people? David Luiz waved Neymar’s empty shirt during the national anthem, a frenzy broke out, and Germany ruthlessly scored seven.
A nation had collectively lost its mind, turning Neymar into a player he wasn’t, and that was neither good for him nor them. In the group stage of the Copa América in Chile the following year, Colombia booed Neymar to such an extent that he was sent off for a head-butt at the back, leading to a four-game ban for his protest. Yet just a month earlier, Neymar had teamed up with Messi and Luis Suarez to lead Luis Enrique to a treble as Barcelona defeated Juventus in the Champions League final. That was probably his greatest season.
Two years later, Neymar inspired Barça’s famous comeback against Paris Saint-Germain, which saw their record jump. He may have felt that he needed to be free of Messi, that this was his best shot at the Ballon d’Or, but he became the means of PSG’s revenge on Barcelona in the next phase of the great Qatari sports investment project. Ultimately, he was always a symbol for someone else’s dreams and needs.
When Messi joined Neymar at PSG there was no chance of recreating Barça’s great forward line; Messi just went and won the World Cup. With his spectacular goal in extra time in the quarter-finals, it seemed as if Neymar had won his moment in Qatar, but then he became another victim of Croatian stubbornness.
Neymar has spent his career chasing greatness and if he hasn’t lived up to the early hype, that probably says as much about how unrealistic and unfair it was as it does about his lifestyle, though that doesn’t help. This World Cup is probably his last chance to achieve the kind of excellence that was expected or demanded, but has so far eluded him.
But Messi went into the last World Cup after half a season in which he had played 18 Ligue 1 and Champions League games, scoring 10 times. Neymar has started 27 league games in the last three years. Even before suffering a calf injury this week he had played just 682 league minutes this year.
Selecting him is either a huge leap of faith from Ancelotti, or an acknowledgment by the Italian that there are political demands on the Brazilian manager that even the most successful coach in Champions League history cannot escape. Ancelotti is a big believer in talent but nothing in Neymar’s form justifies his selection.
It is a choice based on hope rather than logic. Perhaps he can come off the bench to make decisive contributions, but this feels like another example of Brazil’s need for Neymar to become the Messi.
