Stats are from FBRef unless stated otherwise.
For all intents and purposes, Neymar is semi-retired.
In August 2023, Al Hilal signed Neymar for a rumoured €90 million, with claims he would be earning €150m per year (about £2.4 million a week). A month after that, he made his debut for the club. A month after that, he ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament playing for Brazil. Since then, he has not played a single Saudi Pro League game.
His contract expires this summer, and I can’t imagine Al Hilal would like to renew it. We’ve heard rumours that he could move to MLS, or perhaps he might head home to Brazil. Wherever he is, his priority will likely be getting fit and ready for the 2026 World Cup. But unless he has an all-time dramatic turnaround, he’s probably going to have to accept sitting on the bench for the Seleção, coming on late in games. After that, I’m guessing he might retire from football at age 34, or at best spend a few years in an even lower-tier league.
The point is: he’s probably done. Other than some late subs at the World Cup, he’s not going to play at the highest level again. Which means we can now assess the arc of his career. Five years ago, I would’ve thought I’d be writing a defence of Neymar. The mood at the time, especially in the UK, seemed to be that he was an overhyped disappointment. He could dazzle in glimpses, but he didn’t produce so much as get fouled, and lacked career-defining big games along with major trophies not won while playing next to Lionel Messi. I tended to push back against that consensus, arguing that Neymar was a supremely talented player who got a bit unlucky.
But I think the consensus has changed since then. It’s inevitable, really, as a younger generation comes along and starts to dominate the cultural conversation. It feels, at least to me, as though a lot of people who grew up in a different media era to the one I did, who consumed football through social media highlight reels as much as full matches, have a heightened view of Neymar. I ruffled some feathers a few weeks ago when I said on Twitter that I thought Mohamed Salah was the superior player. I stand by that. But this article isn’t about Salah. I wanted to articulate how I feel about Neymar and why.