What a player he was for PSG though, watching him live was sometimes dreamlike
The natural successor: Has Neymar blown it?
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He was, but most in this thread never watched him there so we get a bunch of clueless comments about him 'ruining his career' by going there. He was a hair's breadth away from winning the Champions League and a quadruple with them.
Guys making €150m a year and he's played 7 games so far! Good investment so far.
He did ruin his career by going there. He was one of the best players in the world in a front three at one of the biggest clubs in the world, that would rival any front 3 in the history of the game. He was motivated, he was hungry and he had some of the best medical staff on the planet taking care of him.
He went to an inferior league, played against inferior players, had only a handful of top opposition every season, got distracted by off the field scandals, and never reached those same heights again.
I have seen you are particularly aggressive in some posts, but just because he played well in an inferior league, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a terrible move for his career.
Didn’t ruin his long term bank account
He didn't just 'play well', he was sublime. But you wouldn't know, because you never watched him there. And if it's that easy, why did Messi, the greatest player of this generation, struggle? Answer, it's not that easy.
He was never getting out of playing sidekick to Messi at Barca. It seemed at the time that his motivation/hunger after having won the CL with Barca was to now take the next step and actually be the leader at a club that were competitive enough to have a chance of winning the CL. We could argue if PSG were the right move for that, but it didn't seem a career ruiner at the time to me, in fact it was more interesting to see one of the best players take a bit of a risk like that, even though it was likely mostly just about the money. Then he got bogged down with injuries and PSG stayed strong enough to justify staying. It almost paid off. Maybe he should have left after it didn't, but with his fitness being what it was, I think his obvious focus by then on Brazil made sense. Be the leading player in winning them the last world cup would matter a lot more than a CL while being injured half the season and missing the run-in at somewhere like Chelsea or City.
He was unlucky with injuries (and that was also partly due to him being the most fouled player in football by far), and he seems to have lost motivation now, but he's still had a great career, let's have it right. He's won everything in the game at club level on both continents and scored over a 100 goals for 3 different clubs (a vanishingly small number of people have done that). And yet you've got people here acting like he's Ravel Morrison, FFS.
The only thing he will disappointed about is not having success with Brazil, that's it. People put far too much stock in what European clubs and leagues a Brazilian player should be playing for/in, completely forgetting that he's not European and he's got 200 million countrymen/women who care much more about the Selecao than they do about any European club.
I would bet I watched him more than you, but don’t want to give too much away about myself online. You shouldn’t make sweeping assumptions about people just because they have different opinions.
You 'don't want to give to much away about yourself online', by revealing which football matches you watched? Um, OK.....
It would be a small detail, but enough to prove that I would have reason to have watched him a significant amount. That’s all. I have done, and my opinion about the PSG move has remained the same.
He is Mbappe.
Leaving the diff anyone can have regarding Maluco's opinion, in a general sense, he is dead right about his move to PSG, it doesn't matter if he was sublime or not there. It just wasn't a great move, not that much because of the real level of the League itself, but because of its perception, because of how he was going to be treated, of how he could have easily landed in an already established bigger and better Club, the flaws in the project itself combine with teh excessive expectations, etc...BTW Di Maria also in general made a bad choice.
And even if both could have delivered a CL there, it would have never been seen as a "Diego's Napoli" thing, so in many ways both even leaving their hearts there, playing excellent, it wasn't a great move. I would add Verratti too, fantastic players that should have chosen a lot better or move faster from there.
And BTW I'm not hating on PSG, on the French Ligue that I found a lot better than many people does, but in the enviroment regarding PSG in these late years and their more than clear silly approach by then.
PD: As a side note, Messi didn't struggle with the League, he struggled with the particular situation of how things developed in last days in Barca, age didn't helped either to his mental state and his approach in my view was wrong given how the PSG enviroment was and in many ways still is.
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His biggest mistake was not choosing Madrid. Cristiano was becoming less and less involved on the ball year after year(in fact, 2013-2014 was his last year as a truly all-round forward). Moreover, Madrid are not very attached to their great players; they wouldn't hesitate to move CR7 to CF position or even get rid of him to fit in a new promising star(Cristiano had extremely clutch moments in UCL later, but you have to think in the context of 2013).
Barcelona sterilized a lot of Neymar's flair and playmaking. They made a luxury Pedro of him. He had to play very advanced on the pitch, waiting for through balls from Messi or to make 1-2s to assist him. Only in his last year there they gave him a bit more freedom. Neymar was never this modern wing-striker. At Santos, he was a player who got the ball very deep in the field and orchestrated all the playmaking, especially after Ganso's knee injury. In his first steps in France, it was clear how much his potential was being hampered at Barcelona. Should he have waited another two or three years, at his prime, before definitely taking over Messi's place? I don't think so.
Regarding his move to PSG, while I agree going to France was very audacious, I don't think there were a lot of options. Madrid? Barcelona would never sell(and Neymar wouldn't make that move either). Bayern? It would be a very weird move; the German club really doesn't have a profile that combine with this kind of superstar. Chelsea? United? City? Maybe would be better options, but the first two didn't look very promising at that time, in spite of Chelsea PL title, and I'm not sure they'd invest the money required; City was a better option, but was Guardiola willing to build a team around him? Also, Neymar seemed to be particularly hated in England.
Barcelona sterilized a lot of Neymar's flair and playmaking. They made a luxury Pedro of him. He had to play very advanced on the pitch, waiting for through balls from Messi or to make 1-2s to assist him. Only in his last year there they gave him a bit more freedom. Neymar was never this modern wing-striker. At Santos, he was a player who got the ball very deep in the field and orchestrated all the playmaking, especially after Ganso's knee injury. In his first steps in France, it was clear how much his potential was being hampered at Barcelona. Should he have waited another two or three years, at his prime, before definitely taking over Messi's place? I don't think so.
Regarding his move to PSG, while I agree going to France was very audacious, I don't think there were a lot of options. Madrid? Barcelona would never sell(and Neymar wouldn't make that move either). Bayern? It would be a very weird move; the German club really doesn't have a profile that combine with this kind of superstar. Chelsea? United? City? Maybe would be better options, but the first two didn't look very promising at that time, in spite of Chelsea PL title, and I'm not sure they'd invest the money required; City was a better option, but was Guardiola willing to build a team around him? Also, Neymar seemed to be particularly hated in England.
If that happened, they wouldn't win the amount of CLs they won during the Ronaldo era.
Neymar was never meant to be the main player behind any serious CL / League challenge and I really like Neymar. He never had the mental or physical to be the main player behind a title challenge through a season (he definitely had the talent though)
He always had the liberty to play deeper, he mainly had to open himself to the flanks more than Messi and Lucho, yet he played with lots of liberty to (in my view) his biggest strengths: a trully fantastic winger/second striker, that like Di Maria and others in that role (Mane), could threw himself to the middle and operate as mediapunta, or even enganche, but not precisly as a trully orchestrator, nor be as assertive or intelligent as Zico for instance was. He does it in a very old fashioned winger phenom alike, with all the good and bad that this involves.
That's why his character and improvisation, was always better as a winger with liberty to drop whenever he wanted and switch positions with other intelligent and polivalent offensive players like it happened in Barca...In his Barca days if he played with Pep? yeah the bald one might have used him more a la Henry, more restricted and such, but Luis Enrique didn't do that to to consider him sterilized, not even near.
Madrid could happened anyway, many players forced that move in the past. Yet looked like a far fetched scenario at the time. The rest of clubs? he could have went to any of them with just a proper pre talk and even if it was written in stone that the whole England hated him, it would have took him two matches for any English team crowd to love him instantly. In any case, no team had to be built around him, nor I think that he needed that due to shi style. It was just to create a proper enviroment for him to launch him and that's all, more than being the orchestator, Ney seemed to be the MAIN DUDE, the primery star, while earning a lot of money and take a porject to its objective with all the good that would have come with it, yet PSG was quite a messy affair way before Ney joined them and far from a great bet at that point in his carreer.
What you call "having the liberty to play to his strengths" was forcing him in a limited position in my opinion. Messi was always the one who got the ball deep, made the pass selection, risked through balls and was the focal point. In no way I'm trying to shame Barcelona for that, to be clear. It was probably the best option for them to use Messi as much as possible.
Di Maria and Mane were way more limited players than Neymar; they didn't have nearly the same pass selection and technique, timing on the ball and overall quality to operate under pression. About him "not having the same intelligence as Zico" sounds like a very pointless statement. He had the qualities to be a effective main playmaker and proved that at PSG. Maradona wasn't as "cerebral"(a very ridiculous term, indeed) as Platini or Cruyff, but still was a better central creator. Perhaps the use of "orchestration", a word that has received a pedantic connotation in football, was the reason of that assertion.
In Figo's case, there was a contractual context that simply didn't exist in Neymar's case. I don't remember exactly the situation between Barcelona and Laudrup, to be honest. More importantly, Neymar would never do that. He's not the lofty, greedy guy that Europeans think; there was no chance of him making that move after the relationship he had built with the Barça players. Guys like Ronaldo or Romário could do that for sure, but not Neymar or Ronaldinho.
No team had the obligation to build around him, you're right; but my post had the intention to analyse the situation from Neymar's perspective, and, at that time, there was a club willing to do that. Playing as the central point of the team clearly did him good as a footballer.
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In an inferior league, against inferior opposition. It clearly is a waste to stay in a league like that through your prime years. As for Messi, there was 2 big issues, one was that he played second fiddle to Mbappe, the biggest one is that he never even wanted to be at PSG and only ended up there because his previous club had to get him off the wage bill. No point trying to be condescending to other posters when you’re putting forward a fair amount of drivel yourself.
Unlikely, because he clearly feels that playing for PSG (a club that has had some of the best players and managers in history) is akin to playing in League Two
He struggled. I don't care how you want to slice it. And I'm an admirer of Messi, obviously.
The French league is a good league with a lot of great young talent. The play is also pretty physical.
Excuses. It's an 'inferior league' and yet the only one where his numbers were in the toilet (relatively speaking)? OK.
If it's an inferior league then his numbers should have been better than anywhere else. But it's not. It's a lot better than people give it credit for. And playing well in it (especially how well Neymar played) is not meaningless, no matter how much you want to claim that it is.
Genuine question; how will Neymar be remembered do we think? So talented.
That decision to move to PSG was the end of him as a serious footballer. Ultimately I think he'll be remembered as somewhat of a wasted talent, what could have been rather than what was.
Agree with this 100%. Anyone who watched him closely could see the night and day difference in his game after his move from Barca to PSG. He added like 2-3 dimensions to his play that I didn’t even know he had the capacity of simply because of his role at Barca. A “luxury Pedro” is a very apt description of his utilisation at the club. When you take that context into consideration, it makes a world of sense on why he wanted to leave and find his own team. He was never gonna fulfil his potential with a similar player stylistically in Messi alongside him that was already the lynchpin of the side.
He’s not similar to Mane at all. Neymar at his best can run a game like the best of them. At his very best he was as good a playmaker and deep roaming attacker as the likes of Messi & Maradona.
I think his career will be regarded as unfulfilled potential and as a character lacking motivation and determination. In terms of pure talent, I'd have him almost up there with Ronaldinho and Messi.
It all comes back to that foot injury in 2018 and the way he rushed back from it for the world cup in russia. He permanently fecked up his body - which was likely always going to tend towards becoming fragile as he aged given the combination of stress he put it under with his movements, and constant fouls
You know, the status of the English league in the 90s when United got back on top was not that different to the French one of recent times....behind Italy, Spain, Germany and France itself for most of that decade (PSG themselves were arguably stronger and more impressive in Europe over the first 5-6 years than United). But would the people in here saying that Neymar ceased to be a serious footballer, or wasted his career/talent there also say the same for United's legends of that time?
I mean, they shouldn't, because that would be feckin stupid and way over the top, so have some self-awareness. Nobody denies that France has a weaker league than the top 4, that players won't get as much credit for doing well there as they would in the four that are above it, or that someone with the ability to be remembered as a great player will have to do more in comparison to get recognition playing there (especially at PSG who have destroyed the great balance the league had since going full City), but c'mon. teams from those four higher rated leagues know they can constantly buy talent from there at a higher rate of success than any other european league; they know that there's a high chance they'll be developed enough to do the job without too much adjustment - many very quickly becoming elite/great players. And if it's at that sort of level, then it's strong enough for players to be recognised as great for their accomplishments in it.
I think fobals points about the perception rathern than reality of the league, unlikeable nature of the PSG project (not really seen as an organically developed underdog despite being from a less appreciated league) and how it seemed to not be the most professional/well run environment being bigger issues are very good, but I doubt the perception of PSG/the league's quality would have been given much consideration. Maybe if it was a club like Zenit that could theoretically offer him huge money (though in reality they probably didn't have enough clout to circumnavigate ffp enough, like City/PSG) to go to a smaller, less prestigious league then that sort of thing would quickly be considered reason enough to dismiss them, but France are a literal huge player in world football; a country with great tradition in the reality outside of "overly online fan banter culture" territory. Combine that with the gulf state money and you're not going to have trouble being attractive enough to bring in elite players, even if the league genuinely is a notch below other traditional powerhouses.
I mean, they shouldn't, because that would be feckin stupid and way over the top, so have some self-awareness. Nobody denies that France has a weaker league than the top 4, that players won't get as much credit for doing well there as they would in the four that are above it, or that someone with the ability to be remembered as a great player will have to do more in comparison to get recognition playing there (especially at PSG who have destroyed the great balance the league had since going full City), but c'mon. teams from those four higher rated leagues know they can constantly buy talent from there at a higher rate of success than any other european league; they know that there's a high chance they'll be developed enough to do the job without too much adjustment - many very quickly becoming elite/great players. And if it's at that sort of level, then it's strong enough for players to be recognised as great for their accomplishments in it.
I think fobals points about the perception rathern than reality of the league, unlikeable nature of the PSG project (not really seen as an organically developed underdog despite being from a less appreciated league) and how it seemed to not be the most professional/well run environment being bigger issues are very good, but I doubt the perception of PSG/the league's quality would have been given much consideration. Maybe if it was a club like Zenit that could theoretically offer him huge money (though in reality they probably didn't have enough clout to circumnavigate ffp enough, like City/PSG) to go to a smaller, less prestigious league then that sort of thing would quickly be considered reason enough to dismiss them, but France are a literal huge player in world football; a country with great tradition in the reality outside of "overly online fan banter culture" territory. Combine that with the gulf state money and you're not going to have trouble being attractive enough to bring in elite players, even if the league genuinely is a notch below other traditional powerhouses.
I think he will be remembered as a talent that did well but never fulfilled what he could have been. I think he will be remembered along with players at Rivaldo kind of level. Brilliant, but not at the top top table.
Probably in the same way that Ronaldinho is remembered now.
I didn't criticize the League, quite the contrary, I''m not a fella that does not respect every league, but you are not making a real point out of that sentence, specially without context, works more like simplistic pun of the likes I know you are not fond to answer an opinion you found over the top.
That's the only reason I've mentioned that side note.
The real Mane man, the G man.
I absolutely understand why he went to PSG, it was a very tempting combo, in terms of being THE ONE, Paris, France in general, a team with great names and a clear shot for the CL in a traidtional League.
Yet in football terms, with all you've quoted from my previous posts, the general indulgence and mismanagement that PSG has been known in recent years, plus the very own perception of them as a Club and all the over the top combo that comes with it (adding the silly remarks from fans of other Leagues) and the addition of Ney's off the pitch easy going nature, was a very plausible bad choice.
On the other hand, just to give context to his decision, Barca was ran like hell too and required also quite a real renovation after Lucho's tenure ended (that never arrived BTW). With all that they won, with all that great play, Barca still could have been better and won more, but it's Barca, they tend to shoot at their own feet and Ney already knew things weren't going smoothly.
In any case, he should have tried harder to land on a bigger and more traidtional club, with mostly a way better organized project, too much hedonism and over the top aura surrounding PSG for a player with already tendencies to grab everything at the reach of his hands.
PD: I never got why Ney has been so vilified by so many fans, the whole over the top critics due to the ocasional dive because of being hacked the whole time, or his playboy life, while the dude always played with joy, it's way over the top.
Yeas being a rival and him teasing you, will bother, but it's part of the game and he always was a player that hardly retalliate, that was mostly easy going and generous with his mates, dunno at some point it was established he was a dick and he couldn't get that tag from him no matter what.
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Yes. Just consider Cantona's standing in english football vs the world. Or consider how many PL greats of the 90s - until United won the CL basically - are even particularly well known outside of the UK
The thing with Neymar isn't just that he went to the french league, it's that he left Barcelona for them, and went to a team with such a ridiculous competitive advantage over the rest as to make domestic football pretty much meaningless to them
Imagine if Cantona left Milan for United in the early 90s, except in this scenario United were also richer than the rest of PL combined and winning leagues by default, so his signing changed nothing to them domestically
Cheeky 6 month deal to sort out our scoring issues?
He’s finished unfortunately as I’ve just heard he’s out for another 6 weeks with a hamstring tear.
His injury issues are as bad as Hazard’s were at the end or arguably even worse. Hazard at least never had an injury as bad as an ACL+meniscus rupture. The thing about these injuries too is that they impact the balance of everything and you can actually end up being more injury prone afterwards. And to add insult to injury, he’s almost 33. It’d be a miracle if he even comes back half the player at this point when you also factor in the psychological impact of these setbacks.