Neymar has always been a star.
He made his debut for Santos at just 17.
From that moment onwards, his flawless technique and frequently brilliant goals appeared to
set him on a path towards becoming the world’s best player.
But that’s never happened.
And, today, that elusive Ballon d’Or seems as far away as ever: Neymar will forever be
football’s prince without a crown.
But why?
Well, there are two very obvious reasons and a host of smaller, but significant others.
The obvious ones first: Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Since 2008 and with the exception of Luka Modric’s win in 2018, the Ballon d’Or
has been their private property.
It has been their era and so much so, that the award has been less a conscious evaluation,
and more just an annual choice between Ronaldo and Messi based on which trophies they happened
to have won.
And, like a lot of others, Neymar was a victim of that dominance.
Perhaps where Neymar suffered more than most, however, was in the way those two players
redefined what it was to be world-class – particularly for a forward.
Whereas Messi’s and Ronaldo’s dominance has always been reflected by unprecedented
volume, his production has always been merely healthy.
That’s partly a feature of how he’s been used.
It’s also a description of his style of play and the type of players he’s often
played with.
In eight years spent in Europe, he has managed more than 20 league goals in a season just
twice.
And to date, across his time at Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain, he has never finished
a season as his team’s top-scorer.
Of course, there’s a valid argument that says that Neymar has never been the best player
in the world by any measure.
There’s another, possibly more nuanced perspective, which says that he wasn’t built to fit that
description – that he could never have been overwhelming or dominant enough to be considered
in such a way.
Good enough for two third-place finishes, in 2015 and 2017, but never within touching
distance of the award.
And the Ballon d’Or has always been focussed on rewarding a very obvious form of success.
It has its prerequisites and key tenets, such as winning European, World and Domestic cups,
but despite its electorate of journalists, coaches and national team captains, it tends
always to crown whichever player is most vivid in the public consciousness.
Who’s the biggest star?
Who defines his team?
Who is football at that particular time?
It’s not a coincidence that the Ballon d’Or winner is rarely a surprise; the winner is
obvious to everyone long before its announced.
That’s the level of superiority it requires.
For someone like Neymar that has been an impossible role to occupy while Messi and Ronaldo were
still playing.
For Neymar at Messi’s Barcelona, it was literally so.
Yet, of course, his move to Paris Saint-Germain has never brought him any closer.
Firstly, because it removed him from the Clasico rivalry, the best-lit stage in world football.
And secondly, because that transfer challenged European football’s orthodoxies and provoked
negative assumptions about why a footballer would willingly put himself within a less
competitive environment.
But it would be a mistake to believe that the move Ligue 1 alone has been the only factor.
Not least because in the four years since that world-record transfer, Neymar hasn’t
really dominated French football.
He is its most gifted player, but injuries have limited his appearances, and in his first
three seasons he averaged just 17.3 Ligue1 games per year.
In fact, he has never played in more than 30 across all competitions in the same season
and that has helped to sustain an unwelcome reputation.
After all, at the 2014 World Cup, in what should have been a crowning moment in his
own country in front of his own fans, Neymar’s tournament ended prematurely after suffering
a back injury against Colombia.
It was bad timing and bad luck, but questions about Neymar’s durability have remained
ever since.
In stark contrast to Messi and Ronaldo, both of whom continue to play between 40 and 60
games a season well into their thirties.
For Neymar, though, an inability to do that not only lessens him by comparison, it has
also added further intrigue to tabloid stories about his wavering commitment - his long birthday
parties or his trips back to Brazil.
Rumours have persisted too about him being indulged by the PSG’s high brass, helping
to create the image of a footballer who doesn’t take his talent quite seriously enough.
And that’s highly unfashionable and has been for some time.
Ronaldinho was the last footballer to wear his talent lightly and still win the Ballon
d’Or.
In the 16 years since, though, earning the title of the world’s best player has become
associated with compulsive self-improvement, singular focus and a maniacal determination
never to leave the pitch for even a few minutes.
That describes Ronaldo and Messi to a tee, but never Neymar.
For him, though, an even bigger problem has developed over these four years: Kylian Mbappe.
Mbappe is a Parisien playing in Paris and was a World Cup-winner with France in 2018.
That’s enough to be the principal character in Mauricio Pochettino’s PSG side and deny
Neymar the leading role he moved there to occupy.
Mbappe is also younger, more socially conscious, and equipped with that direct, devastating
style of play that is more commensurate with the Ballon d’Or voting trends and the modern
expectation of what a dominant forward should be.
And that’s without considering the candidacies of players like Erling Haaland, who will surely
have a long-term rivalry with Mbappe, or others, such as Joao Felix, Jadon Sancho and Ansu
Fati, who will also be long-term occupants of football’s summit.
But it leaves Neymar as a player between eras.
A genuine star, yes, and wonderfully gifted and full of fantasy, but not built to challenge
those who came before or after him, and never quite able to make the world his own.