Brazilian had the talent to become the greatest of his generation, but a series of unfortunate events left him as the Prince Who Never Became King
Who was the player described by his Santos coach as “similar” but “a bit more special” than Lionel Messi? It was Neymar Junior of course.
This Fulltime Herald writer spent a good amount of his younger days – namely a few minutes of chit-chat with his mates – keeping up-to-date on the brilliance of Brazil’s greatest hairdo enthusiast.
And with Neymar now at Santos and hurtling towards the end of an undulating career, this writer must confess he is left reflecting on glories that might have been.
As a teenager at Santos, Neymar dazzled and caught the eye of every man and his dog in Europe and around the world. He was particularly well-known for his dribbling and bagful of tricks, in the manner of the great Brazilian legends of old – Pele, Garrincha, Ronaldo Nazario, Zico, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho – who brought the thrilling jogo bonito (the beautiful game) to the world.
Neymar left Santos and joined Barcelona in 2013, where he quickly proved himself to indeed be one of the world’s best. He became part of the famed MSN trio (Messi-Suarez-Neymar) that ended the 2014-15 season with 122 goals, the greatest of any attacking trio in Spanish football history. They then broke the same record they set the next season, finishing with 131 goals.
In 2016 Neymar led the greatest comeback of all time, the Remontada, when he inspired Barcelona to a 6-1 victory over Paris Saint-Germain, overturning a 4-0 first-leg deficit.
But then the Brazilian joined PSG in 2017 for a world-record €222m fee. It was not the right time to join the Ligue 1. For a generational player at present it might be, but in 2017 a player like Neymar at 25 years old should have been moving away from, not to, the French league. What if the Brazilian had remained at Barcelona? How different might things have been?
His father said at the time he was not desperate to win the Ballon d’Or, and that if he did he would have stayed at Barcelona, where “he had everything”. Neymar himself said he wanted “a new challenge”, a project with himself at the epicentre, with the task of delivering the Champions League much greater at a club that had never won it before.
But on the flipside the contract was also financially better – he received double of what he was earning at Barcelona – and there were a host of Brazilian internationals already in Paris: Thiago Silva, Marquinhos, Dani Alves and Lucas Moura.
Neymar still racked up goals and assists at PSG, and led them to their first-ever Champions League final in 2020, where they fell to Bayern Munich. The 2020 Ballon d’Or award was cancelled but what if it wasn’t, if Kingsley Coman hadn’t scored that goal, and if Neymar had won the Champions League with PSG? What if.
Neymar’s decision to leave Barcelona was proved in the end to be a mistake, because he did try, not once but twice, to return to the club, including offering to pay €20m of his own money to facilitate the move, according to Sky Sports. Who does so unless they were trying to rectify a bad decision?
This was also when Neymar began to adopt frequent partying and a lifestyle away from the pitch, almost certainly to distract himself from frustrations on the pitch.
Injuries didn’t help the player. What if he had been more fortunate and had a better body? The 2014 World Cup is a good example. In the run up to the tournament Neymar was billed as the hope of a footballing nation that had dominated the 90s and early 2000s and had lost much of their spark. He was the last superstar in a long line of golden footballers, the last Brazilian with true flair, the terminal point of the jogo bonito.
Neymar lived up to that billing with his performance in Brazil that summer. It seemed the stars were aligned. But in the quarter-finals against Colombia he was kneed in the back and suffered a spinal fracture. Neymar was in tears when he was stretchered off.
In the next round the Selecao were humiliated 7-1 against Germany without their talisman, an infamous defeat that created a miserable legend: the Mineirazo. What if Neymar had not got injured in that match against Colombia?
Injuries continued to plague the player at PSG, often keeping him out at crucial stages of the season. He never truly matched the heights of earlier years and ultimately failed in his dream of winning the Champions League with the club. He eventually left in 2023 for Saudi Pro League side Al-Hilal.
By this time it was accepted that his days at the top were well and truly over. Neymar said he could have won the Ballon d’Or at PSG but injuries hindered his chances. He said he dreamt it, but “it wasn’t meant to be, and I accept that”. This was when he began to be referred to in the media as the Prince Who Never Became King.
Neymar had signed a two-year contract with Al-Hilal but played only seven games for the club due to injuries, before having his contract terminated by mutual agreement. His manager at the club described the situation as “unfortunate”.
That word could perhaps be used to describe the player’s career as a whole, a long train of what ifs and if onlys.
He became Brazil’s leading goalscorer, surpassing even Pele and Ronaldo Nazario, and he is one of the only few players in world football to score at least 100 goals for three different clubs, but his career will forever be remembered as football’s biggest “what if” story.
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the Prince Who Never Became King