Career lost

Neymar is playing football again after a year of suffering – but there are only vague memories of the career of the once world’s most expensive player. Why really?

The return was appropriate: a few minutes after he was in place, a ball went to him and the opponent attacked forward and at high speed. Hardly any other player in the world would have passed the ball to a teammate or perhaps tried to escape​​​​​​with an explosive dribble.

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The man with the number 10 on his shirt decided on a different solution: With the first contact, he shook the ball in a high arc over the nearest opponent, circling around the person -opponents, stopped the sinking ball with his right thigh and only then played it back to his main defender.

The audience cheered and clapped and Neymar da Silva Santos Junior trots away at a leisurely pace. He still has, at least in a league and against opponents well below his abilities. And it’s still there. These were the little messages from the circus-ready stunt.

Another one, very familiar to the fans, struck just a few minutes later: it seems that Neymar, the best and most expensive player in the world, cannot recover from the tragedy of the months and years that went away Less than half an hour after being substituted, the Brazilian had to leave the pitch again with an injury.

Injured for almost exactly a year

Neymar is now 32 years old and is at least in the autumn of his career. Scoffers would claim that this career almost ended with the move to Al-Hilal SFC in the Saudi Pro League last summer. Since then, Neymar, who was worth the incredible amount of 222 million euros to PSG in the past, has almost disappeared from the scene.

A torn cruciate ligament and torn meniscus put Neymar out of action for almost a year to the day. Now he’s back – and hurt again?

“It felt like a cramp, just very strong! I’m going to have a look and hope there’s nothing too bad. It is normal for something like this to happen after a year, the doctors had already warned me, so I must be. be careful and play more games,” he wrote to his team in the hours after the game Instagram his 226 million followers.

Never more than the junior partner of the big players

In the wilderness, in a league far away from the scene and without any sporting relevance to world football, the battered man is trying to make a comeback. Again, unfortunately, it has to be mentioned. Neymar’s complete loss of knee was the last and worst injury in an almost unimaginable agony.

Neymar had to overcome 38 minor, moderate and severe injuries in his career, from muscle tear to vertebral injury, two metatarsal fractures, various torn ligaments and a torn cruciate ligament. And hardly any part of the body has been saved so far.

It is also part of Neymar’s history that he was never able to develop his incredible full potential because of these constant problems. It feels like so much more is possible. That’s it – even compared to Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi, the other two heroes of “his” time – he was never more than a junior partner to the greats.

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So now Al-Hilal. A team that theoretically plays in front of 30,000 spectators in a stadium called the “Kingdom Arena” – if all the seats were filled. On average, fewer than 10,000 fans watch in the national league.

Although the concentration of stars is very impressive: In addition to Neymar, the goalkeeper Bono, former Bayern player, João Cancelo, Ruben Neves, Sergej Milinkovic-Savic and the attacker Malcom will now play to the champions Saudi Arabia. Choose a small world, with Neymar as the leader. And despite that Al-Hilal is still a background of world football.

Even from AFC games Champions League Elite, ie the Asian Champions League, hardly anyone in Europe notices. If Neymar hadn’t done a few tricks and could injure himself again afterwards, hardly anyone would be interested.

Like recently at the Ballon d’Or A few important awards in world football have been handed out with more or less emotionn, the new generation has long arrived. Someone like Neymar, with these incredible skills and abilities, could hold a leading role even in old age – if only he had organized his career a little differently.

Is there still a way out of the situation?

Neymar has played for FC Santos, for Barcelona and Paris St.-Germain, three greats in world football. After six years in Paris, despite several offers from ambitious European clubs, he accepted the offer from Saudi Arabia. He was 31 then – at an age when Messi still wanted to win the Champions League for Barcelona or Ronaldo at Real Madrid. Instead, Neymar chose the easiest path, to a second-tier league at best.

If he is healthy enough, the player could certainly have four or five good years, even at the highest level. Instead, he is now fighting for a level of sporting fame that can be handled for a lot of money and he threatens to never be able to find his way out of this dead end again.

There are constant rumors about a move to his home club Santos, although the Brazilians can’t even begin to cover a staggering salary of 70 million euros per season. Or to the United States. Old Barca friends Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets, Luis Suárez and of course Leo Messi play at Inter Miami.

It would be an attractive option to reunite the old group in a slightly better and more respected league. However, this would have to go around the salary cap in Major League Soccer. The financial areas in which Neymar caught himself not only but finally with the contract in Saudi Arabia would then become a boomerang.

Store used

• instagram.com: Post from Neymar

An earlier version of this article reported that Neymar moved to FC Barcelona for 222 million euros. That’s right, he moved to PSG.

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