You know what upsets me…. People forget Neymar was already 22 by the time he arrived in Europe, they disregard that part of his career as if, back then, he didn’t have half the world convinced that he was the single greatest wonderkid of all time… I mean, you have to realize, by then he had played over 230 games already, with about the same number of goal contributions …. as well as winning a total of 72 awards and trophies in just 5 years, including 2 nominations to the ballon d'or, which no one playing in south america ever managed to do… Back then it seemed Neymar was destined to become a legend, I mean right from the moment he was born, everything seemed to be on his side, not only did he have the genetics with his dad being a footballer as well, but his birthday, the 5th of February might be the biggest good luck charm when it comes to football, from Cesare Maldini to Gheorghe Hagi, Tevez and even Ronaldo, it almost seems that if you’re born on that date, you’re bound to become a footballer.
But don’t assume things were always easy, all of it could’ve gone very wrong for Neymar from very early on… when he was just 4 months old, his family was driving to see some relatives when a car swerved into their side of the road crashing violently into them… As his father regained consciousness, the pain he felt was so bad he yelled out to the mom that he thought he was going to die… turns out, he had broken his hip and would even be forced to retire from football following the accident, but if you ask him what ended up scaring him the most was the moment he realized Neymar wasn’t in his seat… he thought he had been ejected from the car, that he had died… thankfully the mom ended up finding him under the her seat… badly hurt, with blood running down his head, but alive and without a single broken bone… In fact, it would be thanks to his father’s obsession for football that Neymar would become as good as he was, as early as he did… At just 6 years of age, he was just running in the stands of a futsal pitch when a scout named Betinho, the same man who discovered Robinho, saw him… noticing his speed, and the precision with which zigged and zagged between the seats was enough for him to tell he would be the next great… immediately contacting every one he could and landing him at Portuguesa Santista, taking from the stands to the actual futsal pitch… which would be what would define his iconic playstyle… You gotta realize this, Neymar instantly became a local phenomenon, he was so good, he made the newspapers all the time, people came from far away to watch him, the futsal court was always packed, ironically, it is said even Robinho went down there once just to see the kid everyone was talking about… And in similar fashion so did another Santos legend, Zito. Actually, oddly enough he supposedly had been told to go watch him by famous Santos fanatic Alemão… who for some reason had the Santos badge tattooed on his forehead… and… well… everywhere… moving on… The point is the moment Zito saw him, he pretty much ran to the president of Santos, telling him to not only take the kid, but to give him a contract and to make it a long one… because the kid was just 10… And somehow, he was convincing enough, that despite the fact Santos didn’t even have a youth team young enough to accommodate a 10 year old, they ended up actually setting up trials and creating one from scratch, just so they could sign him…. At 11, Neymar was already being paid a wage and it was serious money… But still, over the following years, it would still be in the futsal court that he would make the most waves… You see, he took his school’s team to the final of the Copa TV Tribuna, that’s like televised youth futsal… yeah, it’s a big deal and that might just make Brazil, the coolest country in the world… Regardless, what would make that game iconic, would be the fact that by halftime with the game tied, the reporters would interview Neymar and the kid was incredible, stoic as it gets, he told them he was confident they would win… but once the game restarted, things went wrong for him, as his team went behind, which sent him into overdrive… I mean he literally refused to pass the ball, it was all to the point that when the other team went two goals in front, he began literally either shooting from one side of the pitch to the other or just trying to take the entire team on his own, eventually even succeeding and scoring a goal, though they would end up losing 5 to 2… Which might have you saying “Hey, what kind of ending is that?
! ” Well… that wasn’t the ending, because the next year, Neymar came back, better than ever and finally took the trophy… Though, that probably meant nothing to him, as by then, he was literally flying to Spain to go on trial at Real Madrid… They flew him and his dad, they showed him around, they did everything they could… I mean honestly, it seemed they would buy him the moon if it it was possible… and he did even end up being registered as a Real Madrid player, but Neymar seemed homesick from the moment he got there, so his dad talked to Santos, convinced them to pay them a signing bonus of 1 million reais and just brought the kid back to Brazil… And from that moment on, he just blew up, over the next 2 years, he began playing with the oldest kids in the academy, despite being just 15 and still managed to outshined everyone so much that he began getting his first call ups for Brazil’s under 17 national teams, becoming the most notorious wonderkid in the entire country… prompting Santos to lock him down with a contract shortly after he turned 17 and moving him to the first team where at first he wasn’t even supposed to play… But well guess what happened? He completely demolished his teammates in training, leading the manager to joke about calling up for the next game, with Neymar, against his expectations, telling him that he was more than ready… Meaning that by the time the match came around, with the result tied at nil nil in the 59th minute, the entire stadium, knowing how talented he was, began calling for Neymar’s name, asking the coach to bring him in… and well, he obeyed and Santos suddenly looked lively again, flipping the game on its head and taking the win… From there on out, he made one more appearance coming from the bench and suddenly he had made 15 consecutive starts for the club….
And even though, over the second half of the season, the coach did take a step back when it comes to that… by the end of the year, not only had he won the award for best young player at the paulista championship, but he had made it to the final of the competition, where he went head to head with the Fenomeno himself, who, unfortunately for Neymar, scored twice and took the win… Regardless, the following year, with Ganso and Robinho by his side, Neymar would take it all to the next level, taking the paulista by storm with 14 goals and 5 assists in 19 matches but above all scoring 2 in the final match to give Santos the title and himself, the award for best player of the tournament… All while going on an even more absurd run in the Copa Brasil, scoring 11 and assisting 7 in just 8 matches, at one point going on a run that saw him get 14 goal contributions in 3 matches, including a 5 goal haul in the final one…eventually taking the title as well as the competition’s top scorer award… At just 18 years of age, Neymar was the poster boy of Brazilian football, the face of the brasileirão…. Santos had even rejected a 30 million pound offer by Chelsea, only convincing Neymar to stay after telling him that the team would be centered around him, at one point even getting Pelé on the phone to talk him into staying…. Of course, all of this meant that he was expected to be called up for the world cup with Brazil, where we could have seen him line up besides Ronaldinho, but unfortunately national team manager Dunga robbed us of that possibility by leaving Neymar out of the tournament… Maybe it had something to do with the fact that was also the year that René Simões referred to Neymar by saying “We are creating a monster” which he did not mean in a good way… Let me explain… Neymar had become famous for scoring penalties with a “paradinha”, meaning stopping right before hitting the ball to trick the goalkeeper into diving too early….
which pissed them off terribly… with the legendary Rogerio Ceni even complaining to the press about it once, which was especially ironic because he too had done it in the past… Regardless, Fifa ended up banning the move, which forced Neymar to adjust, leading him to miss a few penalties, which eventually led his coach Dorival to order him mid game to let one of his teammates take one instead, with Neymar freaking out and cursing out the coach from inside the pitch… meaning that when René calling him a monster, what he meant was a little spoiled brat…. rather than a monstrous footballer, though to be fair, he did apologize later… And maybe the 43 goals and 10 assists over 63 matches also made up for it a bit… While his golden boot for highest Brazilian goal scorer of the year and the award for best forward in the league, despite Santos’ 8th place finish… earned him first call up to the Brazilian national team… Though to be fair, the following year, it would still be with the under-20 that he would make history, starting the Sudamericano with 4 goals in a game and going all the way, taking the title and the top scorer award, having scored more than twice as many goals as anyone else… After all he was already too good to be playing in these youth tournaments, that year Neymar was not aiming for titles such as those, he was aiming for the big prize, the Copa Libertadores… Starting it all off by scoring the goal against Colo-Colo that would earn them qualification to the knockout stage, where he’d put up on one of the most decisive performances of all time, first assisting the only goal vs Club America to put them in the quarters, where he would assist one goal and score the other as Santos beat Once Caldas 2 to 1… In the semi finals the story would repeat itself again, as Neymar assisted the only goal in the home leg and then scored the 3rd and decisive goal in their second leg 3 goal draw… up and opened the scoring as Santos would inevitably be named South American Champions… the first time they had won the competition since Pelé… and of course, do I even need to say it, Neymar was the player of the tournament… And as if these performances weren’t iconic enough, on his very next game for Santos, Neymar would put on his most iconic performance ever in the white shirt going head to head with Ronaldinho as they faced Flamengo… Oddly enough the match started with two goals by Borges, with Neymar assisting the second just 16 minutes into the game before scoring quite simply one of the greatest goals of all time just 10 minutes later to put Santos in front 3 nil already…. However, Flamengo wasn’t gonna let it go that easy, coming back to tie the match, with Ronaldinho scoring the first and assisting the third… This would already have made the game a blockbuster but not only have I not even mentioned the fact there had already been an open goal miss and a penalty miss but also the fact, that the game was far from over, with Neymar putting Santos in front with another great goal, before Ronaldinho led Flamengo to yet another comeback, scoring two more to complete the hat trick… But don’t worry about Neymar, he also got a reward for his performance… the Puskas award for his first goal, becoming the youngest ever player to win the title, eventually being outdone by Daniel Zsori, who scored his goal on his debut match, which is a record I’ll never get over… But anyway, just to add to the absurdity of that season, just a few months later another insane storyline was produced… So, as his teammate Diogo tells the story… It was the day before their match against Atletico Paranaense and Neymar insisted in playing futevôlei all afternoon… the other players worried that he would be too tired for the match, but he didn’t listen… the next on the way to the match he was so worn out he literally fell asleep on the bus… the player were pissed, they thought he wouldn’t be able to perform, but once they got to the stadium, Neymar got up, put on his kit and scored four… as the commentator said on that day, “The only thing left for Neymar is to make it rain”.
. . it was simply a godly performance… However, the next month, in the club world cup, no matter how well he played, there was nothing he could have done to take the trophy, as Santos made it to the final only to be destroyed 4 nil by Barcelona… At least, he did finish the year on a great note, being nominated for the Ballon D’Or for the first time, immediately going into the top 10, despite the fact he was only the second ever player to get nominated while playing in south america… that’s just how impressive his season had been… Regardless, the following year he didn’t hold back either… putting numbers on the board like never before… Winning his third consecutive paulista championship with 20 goals and 8 assists in 18 matches, in an absurd performance that saw him be involved in 74% of the goals scored by Santos in the 7 matches that preceded the final, totalling 13 goals and 4 assists over that period… But don’t get the idea that he could only do that in the regional championship, his numbers in the Brasileirão were pretty much the same and his most iconic performance of the year even came in the Libertadores once again… So… it pretty much all started when the manager of Bolivar took a jab at him in the pre match interview, saying “Neymar, I don’t even know who that is”.
. . That sentence already angered Neymar, but once Bolivar took the win in the home game played in the famously hostile mountains of Bolivia….
it all became much worse… Leading him to warn Bolivar that in the second leg they had it coming for them… Well, let’s just say 6 minutes in Neymar had grabbed an assist to level the aggregate score, then 16 minutes after that he had scored to put Santos in front before letting loose and starting what was simply one of the greatest sporting humiliations of all time, scoring another 6 minutes later and then assisting one more just 8 minutes after that… eventually even assisting one more to total 2 goals and 3 assists for the match, as Santos demolished Bolivar 8 nil… the biggest win in a Libertadores match since 1970… Unfortunately, two rounds later Santos would be stopped in their tracks by Corinthians as Neymar's only goal wasn’t enough to put them through to the final once again, but at least he did take the top scorer award, which he still hadn’t been able to do… And despite the fact there was more heartbreak coming his way later on, as he witnessed Brazil coming out defeated in the olympic games after leading them to final, none of that was enough to stop him from winning the most prestigious award available in Brazil, the hours concours… an award that serves the purpose of literally taking Neymar out of the competition for any other award, considering him simply too good to even be compared to other players… For a bit of perspective, this award has only ever been given to Pelé, not to Ronaldo, Ronaldinho or Zico, only Pelé and Neymar… After all, with 43 goals and 19 assists in 47 matches… What else were they supposed to do?
