Yannik
Senior Member
The brazilian Vargas
Neymar Jr. - v5
- Thread starter El Flaco
- Start date
The brazilian Vargas
Jadentheman
Active member
He's not better than Messi. Everyone knows that, but currently he's close to or on par with Messi's level. I think instead of arguing we should be celebrating. Because when he's on his game he really is like Ronaldinho 2. And that's good for Barca.
Richard.H
Senior Member
Consistency is key. I want to see him perform at this level for longer than 3 months, then he can be compared to Messi.
What makes Messi so great is that he is able to play at a high level for every game for at least a period of 6 months or longer. That's what makes him a legend. Neymar always has a bad game after 2-3 good games.
What makes Messi so great is that he is able to play at a high level for every game for at least a period of 6 months or longer. That's what makes him a legend. Neymar always has a bad game after 2-3 good games.
F
FlaFCB
Guest
Consistency isn't something that common in footballers, though. We were spoiled by Messi and Xavi, but most footballers don't have their level of consistency.
JamDav1982
Senior Member
That is not true about Messi being good every game over a six month period though. No player does that. Even Messi who in the past has shown a high level of consistency that no one else can match.
To be honest Messi has not played well vs Real in years. Was awful against PSG in first leg and average in second and last year was awful over two legs vs Atletico in CL when Barca went out.
Messi is a genius on the ball but is not the same force in the biggest games as he was - consistently.
Would argue since the CL win in 2015 Neymar has been more consistent in the bigger games. If Barca go on to win the CL it will be very close for Balon dor.
Whenever Messi has a subpar performance it usually is because he did not have enough rest before the game. He is the world's best player but not top level in ability to recover after a tough match, or overcome jet lag after long travel.
Check out his 'bad' performances and you will find that I'm right.
Against PSG it was his third match within 6 days. Neymar did not play Atletico CDR match and performed much better. Against Real Madrid last year, Messi was tired and jet lagged after a tough trip to Argentina where he played an amazing match against Bolivia. Not many fans saw that match. (Frankly, I think Messi sacrificed Barça CL success in 2016 and a potential 6'th Ballon d'Or for his Argentina rescue operation).
Neymar did not play too well either, all South American players suffered from International break just before Clasico and CL quarterfinals.
Bottom line: Check statistics and you will find that Messi needs at least 3 days of rest before a big game. Neymar may be a bit more resilient. If Neymar improves his finishing and keeps improving his passing skills, he is destined to take over as #1, probably next year and perhaps already this year, depending on CL performances. Cristiano should be behind both Messi and Neymar, although he may be protected by FIFA / Real Madrid.
Check out his 'bad' performances and you will find that I'm right.
Against PSG it was his third match within 6 days. Neymar did not play Atletico CDR match and performed much better. Against Real Madrid last year, Messi was tired and jet lagged after a tough trip to Argentina where he played an amazing match against Bolivia. Not many fans saw that match. (Frankly, I think Messi sacrificed Barça CL success in 2016 and a potential 6'th Ballon d'Or for his Argentina rescue operation).
Neymar did not play too well either, all South American players suffered from International break just before Clasico and CL quarterfinals.
Bottom line: Check statistics and you will find that Messi needs at least 3 days of rest before a big game. Neymar may be a bit more resilient. If Neymar improves his finishing and keeps improving his passing skills, he is destined to take over as #1, probably next year and perhaps already this year, depending on CL performances. Cristiano should be behind both Messi and Neymar, although he may be protected by FIFA / Real Madrid.
JamDav1982
Senior Member
The fact he finds it harder to recover doesnt really make any difference and is all part of the debate but it is not the case that every bad game is the result of him being tired anyway.
Most players need rest and going down that road could argue Messi should require less rest as he does a lot of that on pitch. Rightly so for most part.
It is just excuses to say he 'sacrificed Barca CL for Argentina in 2016'. The fact was he and most of the team played like shit vs Atletico as Barca went out. No excuses.
DonAndres
Wild Man of Borneo
Neymar definitely is competing for the best player in the world right now. Clearly enough that the next 2 months could seal a Ballon D'or for Neymar depending on his performances and Barca's success. Messi's sustained deadliness in front of goal still gives him a slight edge right now IMO. His playmaking this season has been deceptively good too, despite his low assists tally (which is largely due to poor finishing from teammates).
Neymar is building forward though and making his own strong case. The question is: what does the timeline of his 'peak' look like? Neymar could win the Balon D'or this year, and lose it again next year. We can't assume that his reign at the top of football will ever be constant or continuous just because we've been used to the extreme consistency of Messi and the likes. So far he's given us 3-4 month periods of an extremely high/impressive level of play. We'll now see if he can extend this run through the end of the season and not dip much after that. I believe that, even if not now, he's destined to hit his stride on a consistent basis sometime relatively soon. At that point he'll inherit a 'Best in the World' title that he could potentially keep for years. As good as Hazard is, he's simply never hit the same level of play that Neymar has. Things could change in the future, but Neymar's 'highest' level is almost inarguably higher than any other player of the next generation of players post Messi-Ronaldo to claim the seat.
Neymar is building forward though and making his own strong case. The question is: what does the timeline of his 'peak' look like? Neymar could win the Balon D'or this year, and lose it again next year. We can't assume that his reign at the top of football will ever be constant or continuous just because we've been used to the extreme consistency of Messi and the likes. So far he's given us 3-4 month periods of an extremely high/impressive level of play. We'll now see if he can extend this run through the end of the season and not dip much after that. I believe that, even if not now, he's destined to hit his stride on a consistent basis sometime relatively soon. At that point he'll inherit a 'Best in the World' title that he could potentially keep for years. As good as Hazard is, he's simply never hit the same level of play that Neymar has. Things could change in the future, but Neymar's 'highest' level is almost inarguably higher than any other player of the next generation of players post Messi-Ronaldo to claim the seat.
dakt
Active member
Slight? I say the gap is still pretty wide. Messi's consistency (this season and in last 10 years practically) and much better goal stats are widening the gap. I would also argue a better play overall.
Couple of months of world class play is just far from enough to start boarding the hype train. It can all go supernova in next couple of games, so it's up to Neymar to prove that he can be consistent.
El Flaco
Active member
Xavinho
New member
This is an interesting article:
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ansfer?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ansfer?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
Real Madrid and Chelsea desperately wanted Neymar from Santos but the Brazilian had his heart set on Barcelona. This extract from a new book reveals how the chase unfolded and why it ended up in court
On a July evening in 2011 the football world’s focus was on the Vila Belmiro Stadium in Santos, which appears little changed from the days when a teenage Pelé lived in a dormitory under one of the stands. National-team coaches had arrived in Brazil before the World Cup qualifying draw, as a 19‑year‑old footballer called Neymar went toe-to-toe with Ronaldinho, the two-time world player of the year famous for his hip-swivelling trickery with the ball and toothy grin.
Sporting a blond mohawk hairstyle that teenagers all over Brazil were copying, Neymar was a blur of energy and movement. He danced past six players before slipping the ball into the net. One of the moves was so rapid that it required slow-motion replays to understand just how he had done it.
Neymar had become a commodity that the biggest clubs in the world wanted. His agent Wagner Ribeiro had moved Santos’s previous star, Robinho, to Real Madrid at age 21 for $30m. The next year Ribeiro took the 14-year-old Neymar to see the world’s richest club.
When Santos found out, it became worried that Neymar, who it didn’t yet have tied to professional terms, would sign for the Spanish club. Santos executives contacted football lawyer Marcos Motta and asked him to warn off Real Madrid and alert the football authorities. “We said: listen he’s a minor,” Motta said. “We called Fifa, we called the Brazilian football federation – we called everybody.” Real Madrid said Neymar was just visiting. Soon after, Neymar signed his first contract with Santos.
Santos could not match the wages top European teams were offering. So, when Neymar renewed his contract soon after, his agent managed to convince Santos to give Neymar 40% of his future transfer fee. It was not unheard of for South American footballers to be promised a cut of their next transfer fee. It was a way for clubs to retain talent a season or two longer. Fifa allowed club executives to award players up to 15% of their own fees (in 2015, in an internal directive, Fifa effectively capped the amount at €1 million) – what was more unusual was for a player to bank a cut of his transfer rights before he was even traded.
Santos sweetened the deal by telling Neymar’s father they had arranged an immediate buyer for the stake: supermarket chain owner Delcir Sonda.
Neymar’s father valued the stake in his son’s transfer rights at 5 million reais, about €1.8m. Sonda even came up with an extra $500,000 for Ribeiro. Neymar therefore became a millionaire before his 18th birthday.
The next day Neymar made his professional debut for Santos, coming on for the last 30 minutes. He wore a jersey several sizes too big that hung loosely off his child’s frame. Fans were chanting his name before he came on to the pitch. His earliest touches had the crowd on its feet. “The boy set fire to the game,” said one report.
Neymar went on to score 10 goals in his first league season and 17 in the next, and there were more wealthy investors lining up for a piece of his future transfer rights. A group of rich Santos fans bought 5% of those rights from the club. Their 3.5 million reais outlay meant Neymar’s perceived transfer value had soared more than fivefold in a year.
For Sonda and his investment advisers, the focus was on continuing to cultivate a relationship with Neymar’s father and trying, with his consent, to secure a big profit by promoting the idea of transferring Neymar. Trips to Europe became commonplace. Carlezzo says a Sonda executive told him of a meeting between Neymar Sr and Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich in London.
In August 2010 Neymar made his debut for Brazil in a friendly against the USA. On the same day, Chelsea made an offer to sign him. “We had a meeting in the Hilton Hotel on Lexington Avenue” in New York, Motta said. Seated in the lobby were Neymar’s father, Ribeiro, Pini Zahavi, the Israeli dealmaker who knew Abramovich, a delegation from Chelsea and Luis Álvaro de Oliveira Ribeiro, the newly elected Santos president. Luis Álvaro ended the conversation quickly. He rejected the €35m being offered by the Premier League team. While he tried to appear calm, he was spooked by Chelsea’s push to sign Neymar immediately. He phoned officials back in Brazil to prepare a special career-plan programme designed to keep Neymar at the club for as long as possible. The plan included giving him English and Spanish lessons, specialist physical preparation and hiring him a wealth-management team.
Neymar led Santos to South America’s top club competition, the Copa Libertadores, for the first time since 1963 when Pelé was in the team. Neymar had scored throughout the run to a two-legged final against Uruguay’s Peñarol. He opened the scoring in the decisive second game, where a 2-1 victory clinched the championship, and was named man of the match.
His bargaining position stronger than ever, Neymar’s father persuaded the Santos president to sign what some saw as a naive agreement by the club allowing its star player to negotiate a future transfer with four years left on his contract and leave one year earlier than planned. The licence to negotiate with other teams, set out in a brief one-page letter, meant the father could go to the market early to drum up interest: he subsequently listened to offers from Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.
The end goal for the Neymar entourage was for Neymar to remain at Santos until the 2014 World Cup, when he and his sponsors – such as Nike, Red Bull and Panasonic – would capitalise on his profile before he moved to Europe. Real Madrid was well aware of the array of sponsors that Neymar was attracting. The Spanish club had a policy of taking 50% of endorsement deals players signed, and for years had pursued high-profile players such as David Beckham to increase its income.
José Ángel Sanchez, the club’s general director, had a meeting with Sonda lawyer Eduardo Carlezzo in Madrid in late 2011. At about the same time, Real Madrid made a €45 million bid for Neymar but it was rejected. Real tried another front. President Florentino Pérez called his Santos counterpart while the Brazilian was taking the two youngest of his six children on a trip to France. Pérez offered to fly Luis Álvaro to Madrid for lunch. “I imagine you want to have lunch with me to talk about Neymar’s rights?” Luis Álvaro said, recalling the conversation. “I said ‘don’t waste your time and fuel on the plane because we have no interest in selling.’ What did he do? He got on his jet, flew to Paris and had lunch with me.” At Guy Savoy, one of the most exclusive restaurants in Paris, Álvaro told Pérez what he had told Chelsea: no sale.
Still, Real Madrid felt they were making progress with Neymar’s father. Motta even drew up a contract between the club and Neymar. Abramovich had not given up wooing Neymar either. Michael Emenalo, Chelsea’s director of football, flew to Santos to try again. He met Neymar and proceeded to deliver one of the best sales pitches Motta had ever heard. “It was the very first time that I saw Neymar’s father listen to someone for more than 30 minutes without looking at his mobile,” Motta said.
Emenalo told the story of the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan. How Chicago was not a big team, but together they evolved into international icons. Neymar could become Chelsea’s Michael Jordan, Emenalo said. José Mourinho was about to return to the club as manager and he wants to sign you, the Nigerian added. “You are going to lead Chelsea to the top.”
The more Neymar’s father met his son’s powerful suitors, the more money he realised he could extract from them. He decided that whichever team wanted to sign his son would have to pay an upfront fee of €10m. And then, upon completion of the deal, his son would be due a further €30m.
Under the plan, if either side reneged, it would be liable to pay a €40m penalty. Neymar’s father took out an insurance policy to protect his son against paying €40m in case he was seriously injured before his transfer to Europe.
According to his inner circle, there was only one team Neymar had his heart set on playing for: Barcelona. Neymar was 19 and had only recently moved out of the one-bedroom family home when he secretly agreed to join the Catalan club. On 15 November 2011 he signed a deal pledging to join Barcelona in 2014, and in return the club would pay him an initial €10m and a further €30m when he moved. Three days later Neymar’s parents formed a company called N&N Consultoria Esportiva e Empresarial to receive the first payment. Ten million euros were wired into its bank account in São Paulo.
The pact wasn’t made public and not even Santos knew about it. Eight months later Barcelona buried the terms of the deal on page 178 of their financial accounts, saying it had made a down payment on a future purchase without giving any more details or mentioning Neymar’s name. Neymar’s father continued to exert pressure over Santos by requesting they shorten his son’s contract by one year to 2013. Barcelona wanted to bring forward the deal, because Real Madrid were still pushing aggressively to sign Neymar.
Real were offering him a higher salary and offered to pay the €40m he would be liable to pay Barcelona. Barcelona reminded Neymar that he would have to share half of his pay from new sponsorship contracts with Real Madrid. Barcelona won the tussle and negotiated what appeared to be a very modest €17m transfer fee with Santos.
It was a personal victory for Sandro Rosell. But the taste of success would not last long for the president. At about the same time, Rosell was making an enemy among the fans. Jordi Cases, a pharmacist in his 40s, had a season seat in the cheap third tier at the Camp Nou.
Cases had become incensed by a decision by Rosell to sign a €30m-a-year sponsorship deal with Qatar. He felt that Rosell and his board were betraying the motto of being “més que un club” (Catalan for “more than a club”).
Presented by Rosell as a way for Barcelona to stay competitive in the Champions League, the Qatar sponsorship was approved by just 697 Barcelona members with voting rights at the previous annual general meeting. Cases said the sponsorship was such a significant development that all of the members should be consulted. He and some friends set up a pressure group to try to force a new ballot of all 170,000 members. The motion failed to get enough signatures. Barcelona is in theory controlled by its members: it’s they who elect the president and the board every year. But Cases was irked by the lack of say the members had once the election was over. After failing to make headway with the decision to put Qatar’s name on the team shirts, he turned his attention to page 178 of the club’s financial report that mentioned a €10m down payment on a €40m accord. Was this to Neymar? He wrote to Rosell and the board seeking more details. They ignored him.
In December Cases faxed a complaint to Spain’s National Court in Madrid asking it to investigate whether Rosell had misapplied funds to make the payment. He said he wasn’t accusing the president of a crime, he just wanted to know how the club was spending money on behalf of members. The board responded to Cases this time. Rosell called the complaint “reckless” and his general secretary, Tony Freixa, wrote a letter in Catalan on Christmas Eve to the family pharmacy saying the club could seek damages from him if confidential details about Neymar’s contract were made public. “As you can imagine, the size of the damages would be very high,” Freixa wrote.
Cases was unbowed. When, after the Christmas break, judge Pablo Ruz agreed to investigate, Cases realised he had triggered a scandal. Rosell immediately quit, although he continued to deny wrongdoing. He said he was stepping down to stop the fallout affecting the club.
After receiving permission from Neymar’s family to speak in public, Barcelona called a press conference. Interim president Josep Bartomeu said the transfer was costing the club €57.1m – the €17.1m Santos transfer fee plus Neymar’s €40m – although there were a series of bonus payments worth millions more to the player and his family. Neymar would receive €500,000 per year to be a so-called ambassador for Barcelona in Brazil and his father would receive €400,000 per year to scout three young Santos players. All the payments were on top of Neymar’s annual salary of more than €10m. “We can’t be any more transparent,” Bartomeu told reporters.
Public prosecutor Jose Perals accused Barcelona of financial engineering by drawing up as many as nine separate agreements to avoid the club paying €12m in tax. Barcelona should have withheld 25% of all payments to Neymar as income tax on non-residents, he said. Five days later, Barcelona paid €14m to the tax authorities to cover a possible shortfall plus interest.
At the same time they maintained their innocence, saying they had acted on the advice of tax experts. That wasn’t enough to get off the hook: the judge ruled there was enough evidence for Rosell to stand trial for “crimes against the public treasury” and for “dishonest” management. Cases had not intended to make such an impact and he withdrew his complaint from the Madrid court. It was too late. The court case was going ahead and Rosell faced up to seven years in prison if convicted [a judge at Spain’s National Court subsequently dropped charges against Rosell]. Neymar’s father said he had done nothing wrong. He wasn’t charged with any crime and said he had paid all taxes due in Brazil. Dressed in a white shirt, purple tie and suit and carrying a black Louis Vuitton briefcase, the former mechanic turned up at court in Madrid to give evidence to judge Ruz, winking and flashing a thumbs-up sign to press photographers.
Neymar and Barcelona are due to stand trial in Spain on corruption charges which they dispute.
On a July evening in 2011 the football world’s focus was on the Vila Belmiro Stadium in Santos, which appears little changed from the days when a teenage Pelé lived in a dormitory under one of the stands. National-team coaches had arrived in Brazil before the World Cup qualifying draw, as a 19‑year‑old footballer called Neymar went toe-to-toe with Ronaldinho, the two-time world player of the year famous for his hip-swivelling trickery with the ball and toothy grin.
Sporting a blond mohawk hairstyle that teenagers all over Brazil were copying, Neymar was a blur of energy and movement. He danced past six players before slipping the ball into the net. One of the moves was so rapid that it required slow-motion replays to understand just how he had done it.
Neymar had become a commodity that the biggest clubs in the world wanted. His agent Wagner Ribeiro had moved Santos’s previous star, Robinho, to Real Madrid at age 21 for $30m. The next year Ribeiro took the 14-year-old Neymar to see the world’s richest club.
When Santos found out, it became worried that Neymar, who it didn’t yet have tied to professional terms, would sign for the Spanish club. Santos executives contacted football lawyer Marcos Motta and asked him to warn off Real Madrid and alert the football authorities. “We said: listen he’s a minor,” Motta said. “We called Fifa, we called the Brazilian football federation – we called everybody.” Real Madrid said Neymar was just visiting. Soon after, Neymar signed his first contract with Santos.
Santos could not match the wages top European teams were offering. So, when Neymar renewed his contract soon after, his agent managed to convince Santos to give Neymar 40% of his future transfer fee. It was not unheard of for South American footballers to be promised a cut of their next transfer fee. It was a way for clubs to retain talent a season or two longer. Fifa allowed club executives to award players up to 15% of their own fees (in 2015, in an internal directive, Fifa effectively capped the amount at €1 million) – what was more unusual was for a player to bank a cut of his transfer rights before he was even traded.
Santos sweetened the deal by telling Neymar’s father they had arranged an immediate buyer for the stake: supermarket chain owner Delcir Sonda.
Neymar’s father valued the stake in his son’s transfer rights at 5 million reais, about €1.8m. Sonda even came up with an extra $500,000 for Ribeiro. Neymar therefore became a millionaire before his 18th birthday.
The next day Neymar made his professional debut for Santos, coming on for the last 30 minutes. He wore a jersey several sizes too big that hung loosely off his child’s frame. Fans were chanting his name before he came on to the pitch. His earliest touches had the crowd on its feet. “The boy set fire to the game,” said one report.
Neymar went on to score 10 goals in his first league season and 17 in the next, and there were more wealthy investors lining up for a piece of his future transfer rights. A group of rich Santos fans bought 5% of those rights from the club. Their 3.5 million reais outlay meant Neymar’s perceived transfer value had soared more than fivefold in a year.
For Sonda and his investment advisers, the focus was on continuing to cultivate a relationship with Neymar’s father and trying, with his consent, to secure a big profit by promoting the idea of transferring Neymar. Trips to Europe became commonplace. Carlezzo says a Sonda executive told him of a meeting between Neymar Sr and Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich in London.
In August 2010 Neymar made his debut for Brazil in a friendly against the USA. On the same day, Chelsea made an offer to sign him. “We had a meeting in the Hilton Hotel on Lexington Avenue” in New York, Motta said. Seated in the lobby were Neymar’s father, Ribeiro, Pini Zahavi, the Israeli dealmaker who knew Abramovich, a delegation from Chelsea and Luis Álvaro de Oliveira Ribeiro, the newly elected Santos president. Luis Álvaro ended the conversation quickly. He rejected the €35m being offered by the Premier League team. While he tried to appear calm, he was spooked by Chelsea’s push to sign Neymar immediately. He phoned officials back in Brazil to prepare a special career-plan programme designed to keep Neymar at the club for as long as possible. The plan included giving him English and Spanish lessons, specialist physical preparation and hiring him a wealth-management team.
Neymar led Santos to South America’s top club competition, the Copa Libertadores, for the first time since 1963 when Pelé was in the team. Neymar had scored throughout the run to a two-legged final against Uruguay’s Peñarol. He opened the scoring in the decisive second game, where a 2-1 victory clinched the championship, and was named man of the match.
His bargaining position stronger than ever, Neymar’s father persuaded the Santos president to sign what some saw as a naive agreement by the club allowing its star player to negotiate a future transfer with four years left on his contract and leave one year earlier than planned. The licence to negotiate with other teams, set out in a brief one-page letter, meant the father could go to the market early to drum up interest: he subsequently listened to offers from Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.
The end goal for the Neymar entourage was for Neymar to remain at Santos until the 2014 World Cup, when he and his sponsors – such as Nike, Red Bull and Panasonic – would capitalise on his profile before he moved to Europe. Real Madrid was well aware of the array of sponsors that Neymar was attracting. The Spanish club had a policy of taking 50% of endorsement deals players signed, and for years had pursued high-profile players such as David Beckham to increase its income.
José Ángel Sanchez, the club’s general director, had a meeting with Sonda lawyer Eduardo Carlezzo in Madrid in late 2011. At about the same time, Real Madrid made a €45 million bid for Neymar but it was rejected. Real tried another front. President Florentino Pérez called his Santos counterpart while the Brazilian was taking the two youngest of his six children on a trip to France. Pérez offered to fly Luis Álvaro to Madrid for lunch. “I imagine you want to have lunch with me to talk about Neymar’s rights?” Luis Álvaro said, recalling the conversation. “I said ‘don’t waste your time and fuel on the plane because we have no interest in selling.’ What did he do? He got on his jet, flew to Paris and had lunch with me.” At Guy Savoy, one of the most exclusive restaurants in Paris, Álvaro told Pérez what he had told Chelsea: no sale.
Still, Real Madrid felt they were making progress with Neymar’s father. Motta even drew up a contract between the club and Neymar. Abramovich had not given up wooing Neymar either. Michael Emenalo, Chelsea’s director of football, flew to Santos to try again. He met Neymar and proceeded to deliver one of the best sales pitches Motta had ever heard. “It was the very first time that I saw Neymar’s father listen to someone for more than 30 minutes without looking at his mobile,” Motta said.
Emenalo told the story of the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan. How Chicago was not a big team, but together they evolved into international icons. Neymar could become Chelsea’s Michael Jordan, Emenalo said. José Mourinho was about to return to the club as manager and he wants to sign you, the Nigerian added. “You are going to lead Chelsea to the top.”
The more Neymar’s father met his son’s powerful suitors, the more money he realised he could extract from them. He decided that whichever team wanted to sign his son would have to pay an upfront fee of €10m. And then, upon completion of the deal, his son would be due a further €30m.
Under the plan, if either side reneged, it would be liable to pay a €40m penalty. Neymar’s father took out an insurance policy to protect his son against paying €40m in case he was seriously injured before his transfer to Europe.
According to his inner circle, there was only one team Neymar had his heart set on playing for: Barcelona. Neymar was 19 and had only recently moved out of the one-bedroom family home when he secretly agreed to join the Catalan club. On 15 November 2011 he signed a deal pledging to join Barcelona in 2014, and in return the club would pay him an initial €10m and a further €30m when he moved. Three days later Neymar’s parents formed a company called N&N Consultoria Esportiva e Empresarial to receive the first payment. Ten million euros were wired into its bank account in São Paulo.
The pact wasn’t made public and not even Santos knew about it. Eight months later Barcelona buried the terms of the deal on page 178 of their financial accounts, saying it had made a down payment on a future purchase without giving any more details or mentioning Neymar’s name. Neymar’s father continued to exert pressure over Santos by requesting they shorten his son’s contract by one year to 2013. Barcelona wanted to bring forward the deal, because Real Madrid were still pushing aggressively to sign Neymar.
Real were offering him a higher salary and offered to pay the €40m he would be liable to pay Barcelona. Barcelona reminded Neymar that he would have to share half of his pay from new sponsorship contracts with Real Madrid. Barcelona won the tussle and negotiated what appeared to be a very modest €17m transfer fee with Santos.
It was a personal victory for Sandro Rosell. But the taste of success would not last long for the president. At about the same time, Rosell was making an enemy among the fans. Jordi Cases, a pharmacist in his 40s, had a season seat in the cheap third tier at the Camp Nou.
Cases had become incensed by a decision by Rosell to sign a €30m-a-year sponsorship deal with Qatar. He felt that Rosell and his board were betraying the motto of being “més que un club” (Catalan for “more than a club”).
Presented by Rosell as a way for Barcelona to stay competitive in the Champions League, the Qatar sponsorship was approved by just 697 Barcelona members with voting rights at the previous annual general meeting. Cases said the sponsorship was such a significant development that all of the members should be consulted. He and some friends set up a pressure group to try to force a new ballot of all 170,000 members. The motion failed to get enough signatures. Barcelona is in theory controlled by its members: it’s they who elect the president and the board every year. But Cases was irked by the lack of say the members had once the election was over. After failing to make headway with the decision to put Qatar’s name on the team shirts, he turned his attention to page 178 of the club’s financial report that mentioned a €10m down payment on a €40m accord. Was this to Neymar? He wrote to Rosell and the board seeking more details. They ignored him.
In December Cases faxed a complaint to Spain’s National Court in Madrid asking it to investigate whether Rosell had misapplied funds to make the payment. He said he wasn’t accusing the president of a crime, he just wanted to know how the club was spending money on behalf of members. The board responded to Cases this time. Rosell called the complaint “reckless” and his general secretary, Tony Freixa, wrote a letter in Catalan on Christmas Eve to the family pharmacy saying the club could seek damages from him if confidential details about Neymar’s contract were made public. “As you can imagine, the size of the damages would be very high,” Freixa wrote.
Cases was unbowed. When, after the Christmas break, judge Pablo Ruz agreed to investigate, Cases realised he had triggered a scandal. Rosell immediately quit, although he continued to deny wrongdoing. He said he was stepping down to stop the fallout affecting the club.
After receiving permission from Neymar’s family to speak in public, Barcelona called a press conference. Interim president Josep Bartomeu said the transfer was costing the club €57.1m – the €17.1m Santos transfer fee plus Neymar’s €40m – although there were a series of bonus payments worth millions more to the player and his family. Neymar would receive €500,000 per year to be a so-called ambassador for Barcelona in Brazil and his father would receive €400,000 per year to scout three young Santos players. All the payments were on top of Neymar’s annual salary of more than €10m. “We can’t be any more transparent,” Bartomeu told reporters.
Public prosecutor Jose Perals accused Barcelona of financial engineering by drawing up as many as nine separate agreements to avoid the club paying €12m in tax. Barcelona should have withheld 25% of all payments to Neymar as income tax on non-residents, he said. Five days later, Barcelona paid €14m to the tax authorities to cover a possible shortfall plus interest.
At the same time they maintained their innocence, saying they had acted on the advice of tax experts. That wasn’t enough to get off the hook: the judge ruled there was enough evidence for Rosell to stand trial for “crimes against the public treasury” and for “dishonest” management. Cases had not intended to make such an impact and he withdrew his complaint from the Madrid court. It was too late. The court case was going ahead and Rosell faced up to seven years in prison if convicted [a judge at Spain’s National Court subsequently dropped charges against Rosell]. Neymar’s father said he had done nothing wrong. He wasn’t charged with any crime and said he had paid all taxes due in Brazil. Dressed in a white shirt, purple tie and suit and carrying a black Louis Vuitton briefcase, the former mechanic turned up at court in Madrid to give evidence to judge Ruz, winking and flashing a thumbs-up sign to press photographers.
Neymar and Barcelona are due to stand trial in Spain on corruption charges which they dispute.
DonAK
President of FC Barcelona
Read the article El Flaco posted. They're not interested in money. He feel cheated by Rosell, Bartomeu and Neymar Sr.
Always thought that the only hindrance Neymar has in his career from achieving the very best is his greedy ass father. The guy who could persuade him to move from Barca to PSG, Chelsea or heck even China where he would achieve shit all and piss all over his legacy. Something he might regret 10 years later.
Always thought that the only hindrance Neymar has in his career from achieving the very best is his greedy ass father. The guy who could persuade him to move from Barca to PSG, Chelsea or heck even China where he would achieve shit all and piss all over his legacy. Something he might regret 10 years later.
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mark1nhu
New member
Well, it all depends on the timeframe you want to call "now".
If "now" means the last 2-3 months, they are probably right. If "now" means "last semester" or "last 12 months", then they are definitely wrong.
I honestly avoid to talk about so small timeframes because everything changes too fast in football.
Well said man.
We would have a better environment here if people took your approach on Neymar.
DonAndres
Wild Man of Borneo
I think you're confusing overall legacy with current form. Messi's consistency over the past years doesn't factor in to the metric for 'best player in the past 1-2 months'. Which is why the overall title for best in the world still belongs to Messi until Neymar proves superiority on a longer timescale, to the point where Neymar being the main driving force for Barca can be considered the predictable norm.
However, Neymar's run of form happens to be decisive on a 'calendar year' assessment that puts him in contention for #1 player of 2017 based on the splendid performances his produced in March (which has been a crucial month). I would call it irrational to even claim that Neymar has been better than Messi in the 16/17 season, but the weight of his play in March combined with a fairly good January/February too make him potentially #1 in 2017 so far. This is significant because of its directly correspondence to the Balon D'or calendar. There's an insane amount still left to be played, so nothing is certain. One can only speak in terms of the current scope.
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