It was interesting to hear from Neymar this week. Not because of anything he said, but because he said anything. Which, in all honesty, wasn’t very much. Really, it merely served as proof of life.
“I know [2026] will be my last World Cup,” the Brazilian told CNN, confirming what everyone already knew and no one had asked. He also hinted at a reunion with former Barcelona teammates Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez at Inter Miami this summer, saying “football is full of surprises.”
Fascinating stuff.
Bruna Prado / AP Photo FILES
Neymar is yet to score his first Saudi Pro League goal, despite being with the Al Hilal club for two seasons.
Yes, the soon-to-be 33-year-old is still a professional footballer, ostensibly. If he seems to have faded from consciousness it’s likely because he plays in the Saudi Pro League, which nobody cares about. And even then, “plays” should be used generously, as he’s turned up on the pitch for Al Hilal exactly seven times over parts of two seasons and is yet to score a first Pro League goal.
In other words, there hasn’t been a whole lot to say about Neymar since he welcomed a child with a partner he cheated with in the months before the birth of his last child with his previous partner.
And yet, there he was on Thursday, leading the sports section of Rio de Janeiro outlet O Globo. Not Botafogo, one of Rio’s clubs, failing to pay out bonuses after winning the Copa Libertadores; not Vini Jr., whose Real Madrid side beat Mallorca in the Spanish Supercup semifinal; not even the cancellation of the Lakers-Hornets basketball game because of the LA-area wildfires.
Everything took a back seat to those measly words from Neymar. But why?
It’s simple.
Post 2002 and Brazil’s most recent World Cup triumph, Neymar is the best player his country has produced. Even more than that — which is a lot — he was that rarest of prodigies who turned into a phenom and scored more international goals than Zico, Romario, Ronaldo and Pele.
Most crucially, he might have been the last home-grown superstar Brazilians actually got to know before that inevitable move to Europe. That’s massive. So massive, it makes up for almost everything else.
Look at his stats, for example. Whether he retires at Inter Miami or anywhere else, Neymar will finish his career having played most for Brazilian club Santos and having scored more goals at Santos than he did at either Barcelona or Paris Saint-Germain. That he could have moved to Europe sooner than he did, but chose not to, both endeared him to the public and signalled a moment in which Brazil’s economy was surging and the national mood along with it.
People remember things like that. They also remember a youngster so innocently excited about his sport that he’d play for Brazil overseas, fly home and turn out for Santos the very next day.
When he did finally make the Barcelona switch, he did so on the back of a Confederations Cup win that coincided with a period of social unrest and galvanized his country ahead of the World Cup it hosted the following year. That title mattered. So did the 2016 victory in the Olympic Games — the only tournament Brazil had yet to win, and which Neymar delivered.
In his second season in Spain, his 39 goals in 51 games helped Barcelona to a Primera Division, Copa del Rey and Champions League treble. He finished third in Ballon d’Or voting for his efforts, behind only Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — a feat he’d repeat two years later.
If this is starting to sound like Neymar’s obituary, it’s because part of him died when he made his world-record transfer to PSG in 2017. He didn’t have to do it; he shouldn’t have done it. Whatever boyhood joy he’d retained for playing football vanished the moment he arrived in Paris.
He still somehow willed the Parisiens to the Champions League Final in 2020 — both at the time and in hindsight a magnificent performance — but by 2023 the ultras were at his front door, about to successfully chase him out of the city.
That ill-advised move to football’s oppressive retirement circuit of Saudi Arabia and a gig as a conscience-deceased sportwasher was the last anyone really heard from Neymar the athlete. He’d pop up now and again to complain about having eight cars instead of nine, or how his household staff were required to stock his fridge, or to post pictures of his latest child with his latest mistress.
Which is why it was curious to suddenly hear him talk about football — about his actual job — on a random weekday in early January. Could it be that somewhere, at some level, beneath everything he’s become there’s still a boy-Neymar, a happy Neymar desperate to reemerge?
To that end, and resisting further cynicism, it would be just the thing for him to rendezvous with Messi and Suarez in Miami.
From a purely personal perspective, a free transfer to the Major League Soccer side would get him out of Saudi Arabia, put him back among friends and provide a bit of enjoyment before he leaves the sport for good.
Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter
The Warm-Up
Winnipeg Jets Game Days
On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop.
Sign up for The Warm-Up
Symbolically — and this is the main thing — it would represent, albeit clumsily, a rewind to a time in his life when poor choices had yet to be made, when circumstances he couldn’t control had yet to take place.
People can identify with that — with an urge, either intentional or a muscle memory, to return to something closer to innocence. Almost everyone feels it, even if the opportunities rarely present themselves or the basic laws of aging and experience prevent it.
No, Neymar said much of nothing this week. But he said something. And in those silly, monotone utterances you could just about locate a very unhappy person wishing he was anything but.
jerradpeters@gmail.com
jerradpeters.bsky.social
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/2025/01/10/the-sun-appears-to-be-setting-on-neymars-career
