Neymar completes 10 years in Europe with titles, failures and uncertain future – 05/28/2023 – Sport

Which club will Neymar play for next season?

Doubt has moved big bookmakers. At the moment, taking the odds as a parameter, many believe that he will remain at PSG, with an odd of 1.80, that is, a bet of R$ 100, for example, would return R$ 180 if he won.

English teams such as Chelsea and Manchester United also appear as likely destinations for him. Returning to Spanish football is seen as difficult. And believing that the star will wear Santos’ shirt again would be one of those risky bets, but with a high return, with an odd of 51.0 —here, the same BRL 100 would give a return of BRL 5,100.

The truth is that, after ten years in European football, uncertainty about his future puts the Brazilian star in a very different situation than when he left Vila Belmiro for Barcelona, ​​with which he signed a contract on May 27, 2013.

Two days earlier, via the internet, he announced the end of the soap opera that became the auction between Barcelona and Real Madrid for his signing. Interestingly, he made a cameo in the serial “Amor à Vida”, in prime time on TV Globo, when he revealed the outcome of his private plot on Instagram.

When publicizing their new star, the Catalan team defined him as “the king of the 21st century” and mentioned that he received “recognition from the legendary Pelé, of whom many believe that Neymar is the modern successor.”

At the time, it seemed like a matter of time before he inherited Lionel Messi’s throne in the Catalan team, took the lead in great achievements, was elected the best player in the world and, above all, reached the olympus of football with a World Cup title.

A good part of it all fell by the wayside and, at the age of 31, recovering from yet another injury, he doesn’t know which direction his career will take.

It has not been easy for his staff to find a team willing to invest heavily in his signing, as PSG did in 2017, when the French club made him the most expensive signing in football so far, by paying his release clause of 222 million euros. (BRL 824 million at the time).

When he opened the vault, the Qatari billionaire Nasser Al-Khelaifi believed that Neymar would change the club’s level, mainly, with the unprecedented conquest of the Champions League, which until today has not happened.

Although he piled up titles on the national scene, with 12 achievements, that was not the main objective of his hiring. That’s why the serial failures in the Champions League leave the impression that the move to PSG did not yield what was expected either for him or for the club.

Upon leaving Barcelona, ​​Neymar was looking to be the protagonist of a squad again, as he was at Santos. In the Catalan team, even in his best season, in 2014/15, he always shared the spotlight with Messi, Xavi, Iniesta and, sometimes, even Luiz Suárez.

It was alongside them, however, that the Brazilian won the only Champions League he has on his resume, precisely in 2014/15. In that edition, he was the top scorer of the tournament, with ten goals, alongside Messi and the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo, at the time at Real Madrid, in an emblematic feat as he was equal at that time to the two stars that monopolized the awards for the best in the world. .

But Neymar never managed to unseat them. To date, the best placement that the Brazilian has obtained were two third places, in 2015, when the Argentine won the award, and 2017, the year won by the Portuguese.

In the last edition of The Best award, given by Fifa in February this year, the Brazilian was only in ninth place. He also gave no reason to get anything better than this in the award-rated cycle.

With PSG, he was again eliminated in the Champions League round of 16 – a performance that was repeated in the current edition. For the Brazilian national team, in his third World Cup, he did not make it past the quarterfinals, a stage in which Brazil was eliminated by Croatia.

His frustration was so great that he left Qatar without knowing if he would one day return to defend the national team. Since the fall, he hasn’t donned hopscotch again. He was left out of the first post-World Cup friendly, against Morocco, on March 25, as he had suffered an injury to his right ankle at the beginning of the month that kept him out of the rest of the season, which is nearing the end.

He had a similar problem in the World Cup and did not play against Switzerland and Cameroon, still in the group stage. Even when he returned, in the round of 16 against South Korea, he was not in ideal condition.

Since moving to Europe, the Brazilian has been dealing with injuries. There were at least 16 problems that prevented him from having long game streaks, especially in French football.

This partly explains the difficulty of his staff in finding a new club despite the player’s desire to leave the Paris team, as reported by the European press.

For now, those who opt for a more conservative bet are more likely to profit from his stay at PSG, the club with which Neymar has a contract until mid-2027.