German football legend calls Neymar a ‘bad character’ – 08/23/2023 – Sport

The transfer of Brazilian player Neymar Jr to Saudi football club Al-Hilal comes up against harsh criticism, also coming from Germany.

In an interview with TV BR, former Bayern Munich star Paul Breitner commented on the acquisition with sarcasm: “Thank you very much, dear Saudis, for buying Mr. Neymar. […] This one, we don’t have to take it anymore.”

According to the 1974 German national team champion, Neymar “has been, in recent years, one of the baddest players under the sun”, “one of the greatest actors, one who just pretends, just makes a scene”. And he completed it with an idiomatic insult: “linke Bazille”. Literally “doubtful bacillus”, the expression designates a false, dishonest figure, always hiding his true motivations.

The 31-year-old Brazilian was taken from Paris to Riyadh on Sunday (20/08) in the golden Boeing 747 of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Alsaud, patron of the Al-Hilal club, to be presented as a superstar in a gigantic stadium, gathering almost 70 thousand fans , in a sensationalist event of lights and fireworks.

With a contract valued at 320 million euros (R$ 1.7 billion), he joins the list of acquisitions in the Saudi football market, alongside Cristiano Ronaldo, Sadio Mané and Riyad Mahrez.

Observers opine that, boosting its emerging sports scene, the Saudi fundamentalist regime is practicing the so-called sportwashing (washing by sport), to try to divert world attention from its profile as an authoritarian, misogynistic and even murderous regime – as in the case of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Personal experience with dictatorships

Remembering that a large part of the Saudi population is in Neymar’s age range, the BR interviewer asked: “What do they [Ronaldo, Mané e companhia] what are they going to do with their money there?”, to which Breitner responded with just a smile.

However, the 71-year-old former left-back is skeptical of Saudi Arabia’s plan to clean up its international image with spectacular sporting events and multimillion-dollar acquisitions, nor does he believe in the future of the Saudi sporting project.

“If they act like the Americans did in the 1970s, with their operetta league – that is, only buying players for mind-boggling amounts – then so be it.” But Breitner himself has experience playing for authoritarian regimes: in 1974 he left Bayern for Real Madrid, in Spain then under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

“For 15 months I experienced fascism in its purest form, under Franco, with kidnappings of players’ families, murders and so on”, recalls the Bavarian star. The 36 years of the Franco regime of terror came to an end in November 1975, with the death of the dictator.