The night that Neymar was kicked, kneed and hustled out of the 2014 World Cup, I wandered up the steep hill from Leme to the favela of Chapeu Mangueira to watch Brazil’s quarter-final against Colombia in a packed bar. At the foot of the climb, a police car was parked across the street, its blue lights flashing.
A mural had been painted on the white wall near the motorcycle-taxi stand. It was a vivid picture that could have been an allegory for anyone’s journey out of poverty towards hope.
Out of the mouth of a lizard, a human arm stretched into an open hand. From a little mound of dirt in the palm of that hand, a tree grew.
Paris Saint-Germain star Neymar is on the cusp of Champions League glory once again
Neymar was supposed to lead Brazil to glory at the 2014 World Cup before he got injured
Fifty metres or so further up the hill, outside a couple of bars by a turn in the road, everyone wore Neymar shirts. Tonight was supposed to be his night. Tonight was supposed to be the night when he led Brazil another step closer to deliverance and burst free of the giant shadow cast by Lionel Messi.
When David Luiz scored Brazil’s second goal 20 minutes from the end, firecrackers spat and danced across the terrace where we were sitting and fireworks lit up the night sky over Rio’s beaches below us. Luiz was the scorer. Neymar was the saviour.
But then two minutes from time, with Brazil clinging to their lead, Neymar was felled by a knee in the back by Juan Zuniga and was carried off with a fractured vertebra.
His World Cup was over. We didn’t know it yet but so was Brazil’s. For the first and only time that night, the place went quiet.
In the six years that have elapsed since then, Neymar has travelled through several incarnations. From football’s darling to its rebel angel. From the heir to Messi to his partner in beauty at Barcelona in that famed MSN front line with Luis Suarez that carried all before it.
And from there to a kind of gilded exile with Paris Saint-Germain, derided as a mercenary, mocked as a drama queen, mourned as a genius who travelled by private jet and lost his way. And finally, back to the very brink of vindication and redemption as PSG wait to take on Bayern Munich in the Champions League final at the echoing Estadio da Luz in Lisbon on Sunday evening.
But his tournament ended against Colombia after he was carried off with a fractured vertebra
Many will refuse out of principle to support PSG as they try to win European football’s most precious club prize for the first time in their 50-year history because they are owned by the Qatari state and because they represent both the assault of new money on tradition and a naked attempt to use sports-washing to sluice away a regime’s human rights abuses.
But if this were just about football, if this is just about what we see on the pitch at the Estadio da Luz when football’s new era and its ancient regime clash behind closed doors, it would be hard for anyone who loves the beauty of the game to root against a team that has Neymar.
A mesmeric dribbler, a man who sees things others will never see, a player with nerve and ambition and grace, he personifies the reasons we watch football.
As Messi struggles to stay afloat in the morass of mediocrity and political infighting that Barcelona has become and Cristiano Ronaldo clings to what is left of his greatness at a Juventus team that has just suffered another European failure, Sunday night’s Champions League final is the chance for Neymar finally to claim the crown.
This match and the prospect of the glories it holds out, encapsulates the reasons why Neymar left Barcelona in the first place three years ago for £200million, still a world record fee. The move was the beginning of the end for the great Messi dynasty in Catalonia.
Since then he has gone from the heir to Messi to his partner in beauty in that MSN front line
He was then labelled a mercenary and a man who had lost his way as he moved to PSG in 2017
Neymar’s contribution to Barca’s success has become more and more obvious the longer he has been absent. They tried to replace him but they never could and now they are paying the price. And, finally, Neymar is reaping the rewards.
He wanted to move out of Messi’s shadow. He wanted to be The Man, not just the assistant to The Man. The sorcerer, not the apprentice. He wanted the acclaim, too. He wanted to win the Ballon d’Or, not merely to challenge for the podium places, which was his destiny if he stayed at the Nou Camp.
It was a strange situation he found himself in at Barcelona. I took my son to watch Messi play five years or so ago and when we came away all he could talk about was a rainbow flick that Neymar had performed right in front of us during the game. At Barcelona, Neymar was a genius in a cameo role.
He wanted more than that and he knew he would have to move to achieve it and he had the courage to go after it. For a long time, the move to PSG seemed to have made him a prisoner in golden handcuffs.
Suddenly, he was the poster boy for conspicuous consumption in football, a vulgar trinket for the game’s nouveau riche. He was Barcelona’s Yoko Ono, the one who broke up the band. It even seemed to irk him. His unhappiness — his awareness of what he had left behind — radiated from every pore.
Sunday night’s Champions League final is the chance for Neymar finally to claim the crown
At the start of this season, he wanted out and PSG’s fans wanted him out, too.
But slowly, PSG have become a team, not just a collection of trophy players. In the past, they could be relied upon to collapse under pressure.
They were the best-paid chokers in football. But that changed when they came from behind with two late goals to beat Atalanta in the quarter-finals 10 days ago and their dismissal of RB Leipzig in the semi-finals was a stroll.
That 3-0 victory was notable for the way that Neymar created PSG’s second goal for Angel Di Maria, the player who forms the third part of the team’s dazzling attacking triumvirate with Kylian Mbappe, after a poor clearance by Leipzig goalkeeper Peter Gulacsi.
The clearance was seized upon by PSG and drilled back into the box towards Neymar. The ball was slightly ahead of him and he could have cushioned it with his left foot and tried to go alone. Instead he chose the unselfish option, which also happened to be the unbelievably -difficult-to-execute option.
As the ball was fizzed in, Neymar fashioned a cushioned flick so delicate that it took the breath away even as it bounced perfectly into the path of Di Maria.
Slowly, PSG have become a team, not just a collection of trophy players at the Parc des Princes
It was a team goal. It was a piece of supreme individual skill but it created something for somebody else and, because of that, it felt like a symbol of how much Neymar and his team have grown.
It was a time to sit back and applaud a moment of wonderful skill that was a decisive moment in a huge game.
Neymar is the reason I want PSG to win against Bayern, despite their ownership. He is a fantasy player, a dream chaser. From that mound of dirt, a tree has grown and now, at last, it is time for it to bear fruit.
Kenny’s colour choice of car is lost in translation!
In Derek Anderton’s memoir of life as a steward at Liverpool, Tunnel Vision Anfield, there is, not surprisingly, a wonderful story about Kenny Dalglish.
Not long after he arrived at the club from Celtic in the late 70s, Dalglish handed his bag to the dressing room attendant, Jimmy, and asked him to put it in his car. Jimmy asked him which car it was. ‘It’s ween,’ Kenny told him.
‘It’s what?’ Jimmy queried. ‘It’s a ween car,’ Kenny said, growing mildly impatient.
‘It’s what?’ Jimmy asked again. ‘How many more times?’ Kenny said. ‘It’s ween.’ Jimmy, still none the wiser, knew not to ask again but Dalglish sensed his uncertainty and changed tack. ‘It’s f****** burgundy,’ he said.
Jason is the Wright stuff
Washington made Jason Wright the NFL’s first black team president earlier this month.
Wright was asked for his response to suggestions that the only reason he got the job was because of his colour.
‘If there’s a white brother out there who played seven years in the NFL,’ he said, ‘got a top 5 MBA, became a partner at a consulting firm and led businesses through transformations for the last eight years, and I beat him out because I’m black, I apologise.’
Funnily enough, that line of questioning appears to have dried up.
Washington made Jason Wright the NFL’s first black team president earlier this month