Neymar Jr. is considered one of the best soccer players of this generation. He is rated highly by all the soccer legends including Maradona, Pelé, Iniesta, Xavi, Zidane as the successor to Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
He started his career at Santos FC in Brazil and that is where he attracted the attention of all the big clubs in the world, but he had his eyes set on FC Barcelona in Spain, where he along with Messi and Suarez was a part of one of the most decorated Barcelona trios- MSN. The trio together won trophies for Barcelona each and every year and they also managed to win the TREBLE (Winning three of the most prestigious trophies in a single year) for FC Barcelona. This trio was a dream come true for all the Barcelona fans but unfortunately, this was just temporary.
The downfall of the team started during their 2016-17 season when they couldn’t clench the La Liga title. But, the worst point of this season was losing the first leg of The Champions League to Paris Saint -Germain 4-0. Though they ended up making a heroic comeback in the second leg, the scars were still fresh and this created a lot of tension within the team.
Messi being the talisman at Barcelona, overshadowed all the other players in the team including Neymar Jr. During the 2016 Balon D’Or (The most prestigious soccer award in the world) Neymar was competing with his teammate Messi, and the award was won by Messi.
These aforementioned reasons along with disagreements between him and a few players on the team, resulted in him wanting a move away from Barcelona.
During the summer transfer season of 2017 there were a lot of rumors about Neymar moving away from Barcelona. But, all these rumors were shunned away by the members on the Barcelona board. Barcelona’s star defender “Gerard Pique” also dismissed the rumor by uploading a photo with the player captioning it ” Se Queda” (He Stays).
But as it happened, the very next day, the internet blew up with news about Neymar’s transfer away from Barcelona to PARIS SAINT-GERMAIN for a record breaking sum of $263 Million. This transfer was criticized by all the legends as it was a sly move but at the same not a sensible one as he moved from one of the biggest clubs in the world to a comparatively smaller club.
This move shocked the entire soccer world and especially the Barcelona board as they were kept in the dark about the talks between PSG and Neymar. It created a lot of tension, people started burning his jerseys and posters across the country of Spain and started labeling him “Snake”.
The Neymar transfer saga is considered one of the most controversial soccer transfers is history. This transfer lead to another set of controversial transfers in the subsequent transfer season.
Very informative and interesting especially for the target audience (soccer fans). For me, it was sad to see such an iconic player move from one of the best known teams in the world to PSG. I was shocked to hear that people would have the audacity to burn his jersey after all that he has done for his passion.
Wow–I never realized that there could be so much tension in a sport due to something other than playing the sport itself! But, I suppose that makes sense–Spaniards must have felt betrayed by Neymar. How much was he making when he was on the Barcelona team? I guess if he was willing to leave Barcelona, the new bid from Paris Saint-Germain must have been considerably larger, right?