How Good Was PRIME Neymar

At his peak, he wasn't just an elite player, he was tipped to become the next king of football. There's been a lot of talk about how he's never fulfilled his potential, but when it gets down to it, just how good was Prime Neymar? For Neymar, his story starts in his native Brazil. Born on the 5th of February, 1992, Neymar's rise to the top was almost divine. He came from a family that had to grind their way to the top just to survive. The neighborhood he lived in Sao Paulo was poor, but Neymar didn't let his circumstances affect him. He was always trying to stay positive, and see how he could help his family out. He stayed positive all through, and that's because he'd found something that would help him to become successful. Football At the age of 11, Neymar was one of the best players on the streets of Sao Paulo. Thanks to the guidance of his dad, Neymar Sr., who himself was a former professional footballer back in the day, Neymar took the training sessions seriously, and as a result, he got scouted by Santos. At Santos, Neymar continued to improve, and pretty soon, the coaches were convinced he was going to become a star. It wasn't just them, though. Abroad, Neymar's talent had been attracting interest all around. Real Madrid had sent scouts to Brazil to watch him play, and after a few weeks of studying him, they were positive he was one for the future. So, they arranged the deal, and Neymar had a potential chance to become a future star at the biggest European club on the continent. The trial was all set in Madrid. Neymar went there with his dad. He played well enough to pass it, and the deal to secure the move to Madrid was done. All that was left was for Neymar to sign, but at the last minute, he changed his mind. Neymar wanted to go back to Santos and ask the club to match Madrid's offer for him, which they did, and like that, the deal to Real Madrid was off, and he was back in Brazil. On his return to Santos, Neymar was a different animal. The year was 2009 now, and at 17, Neymar made his debut for the Santos senior team. The start of something special. In his debut season with Santos, Neymar managed 14 goals in 48 games. For a 17-year-old to be registering double-digit numbers in goals at the time, this was a very impressive feat. By the time 2010 rolled around, Neymar had bagged 14 goals in 19 games in the Campeonato Polista for Santos, and 42 goals in 60 games for Santos that season. Neymar was attracting serious interest all around now. This wasn't a trial attempt. Both Chelsea and West Ham had genuine offers trying to sign him. Neymar had even become so good, he made his debut for the national team. He surprisingly didn't make the cut for Brazil's 2010 World Cup squad, despite calls from the locals for him to get included in the team. But perhaps his biggest performance that year came for Santos in the Copa Libertadores. Now to understand just how huge the stuff Neymar did was, here's the backstory behind it. At the time, Santos hadn't won the Copa Libertadores since 1963, during the days of Pele, but the 2011 version of Neymar was about to change that. He was special. Now Neymar scored 6 goals en route to the final, and after a nil-nil draw in the first leg of the final itself, in the second leg, in front of a home crowd with Pele watching, Neymar sent Santos on their way to victory. His goal helped the team to a 2-1 final win. Neymar himself balled out in the competition. Nine goal contributions in 13 games, and his serious form caught the eye of many teams abroad. Real Madrid even came back wanting to sign him. But ultimately, Neymar chose to stay at Santos and continue to put on a show. Now this stunning goal here was so good that it won Neymar the Puskas award that year. Before him, players like Robinho and Ronaldinho had all come from Brazil's Serie A league and made it to Europe as promising talents, but Neymar was more than that, he was an elite player. Still playing for Santos, he made it the Ballon d'Or top 10, amazing! It gets even better too. Neymar won the 2011 South American Footballer of the Year that year. By 2012, Neymar hit a truly unique landmark. On his 20th birthday, Neymar scored this goal. Now what was special about it? Well, it was the 100th goal of his career. Allow me to rephrase that again. Neymar was 20 years old playing in Brazil's top flight, and he'd already bagged a hundred career goals. That season, he hit 43 goals and 10 assists in 47 games, voted as the South American Footballer of the Year for a second time beating the likes of Ronaldinho, and by the time 2013 rolled around, Neymar was primed to seize the stage with Brazil. The first major tournament with the national team for Neymar, and it was on home soil, the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup. To say Neymar performed beyond expectations in this tournament is an understatement. He was on a completely different level. Four Man of the Match awards, four goals and two assists in five games, including a goal in the final versus a peak Spain team. After this performance, it was clear to both Neymar and his team that he wasn't going to remain at Santos for long. Now clubs were ready to go all out to get his signature, but one club managed to beat the rest at the end of the 2012-13 season and paid $57 million to make Neymar their latest acquisition. Barcelona, and when he immediately arrived, the headlines were clear. While Messi remained the biggest player at the club, Neymar was the guy everyone believed would be what Messi was in the future. Messi's first season for Barcelona was decent enough. He managed 30 goal contributions in 41 games. Once his first season was over though, Neymar's attention was back again with Brazil. This time, the expectation was even bigger. Neymar was the poster boy of a Brazil team that was expected to go all the way on home soil at the World Cup. Neymar delivered in his first game, a goal versus Croatia to seal an opening day 3-1 win. Neymar followed that up with a brace versus Cameroon. He finished the group stage as Brazil's top scorer with four goals, and helped the team in a nervy penalty shootout win versus Colombia in the round of 16. But at quarter-final stage, just as his career was looking on the up, Neymar's world came crashing down. The tackle from Juan Zuniga injured his vertebrae, and that was it for Neymar. His World Cup dream was over. Brazil managed to win the match 2-1, but in the semi-final, the first match of the competition, they were playing without Neymar. Brazil suffered its biggest defeat in World Cup history. They lost 7-1 to Germany. Neymar's focus was now on getting back to the level he was at Santos before leaving and recovering from his injury, which he managed to. And in the season that followed next, Neymar became part of a trio that dominated European football. In the 2014-15 season, Barcelona won the treble of La Liga, the Copa del Rey, and the UEFA Champions League, and Neymar played a starring role in that. He had 22 goals and 9 assists in 33 La Liga matches, 7 goals and 1 assist in 6 Copa del Rey matches, and in the Champions League, his 10 goals in 12 matches meant he finished as the joint top scorer in the competition, alongside Lionel Messi. And hey, Neymar even scored in the final. The goal that effectively sealed the win for Barcelona. Together with Messi and Luis Suarez, Neymar's role in the MSN was to become the exciting part of an attacking trio everyone tuned in to watch week in and week out. They won, and Neymar continued to succeed both on a collective and individual level. He finished third in the Ballon d'Or nominations for that year, and in 2016, he captained Brazil to history. This goal in the men's Olympics football final versus Germany secured Brazil's first-ever gold medal at the event. Two years on from that humiliating defeat versus Germany, and with Neymar in the team, they were now men's Olympic champions. The 2016-17 season was a crucial one for Neymar, one that looking back at it now, changed everything. See, Neymar up to this point was seen as part of that exciting attacking trio, but on an individual level at Barcelona, he simply couldn't escape Lionel Messi's shadow, and he confirmed this himself in that epic Champions League match versus PSG. After losing his first leg 4-0, Neymar sparked a revival in the second leg. He scored two goals and provided another two assists as Barca won 6-1, and pulled off a miraculous comeback to turn around a 4-0 deficit on the night. Anyone who watched this game knows, Neymar was the obvious star of the show, but when the headlines came out the next day, on the front pages of the papers, you can kinda guess what happened next. Yeah, Messi was everywhere, hardly any real mention of Neymar. At this point, Neymar had a decision to make, either stay at Barcelona and wait for his time to come, or leave and establish himself at a new club. Eventually, when PSG dropped the sporting project of making Neymar the face of the club's bid to become the major sporting force in Europe with a world-record $222 million offer, Neymar couldn't resist, and a few days later, he was Paris' latest attraction. Neymar, PSG's new number 10, PSG's latest star, the Ligue 1 was to become to him what La Liga had become to Messi. At least that was the idea, and for a first season, Neymar did alright. 28 goals and 16 assists in 30 games, won Ligue 1 in his first season and the French Cup. You'd have forgiven the Brazilians for expecting a lot more from Neymar, heading into the 2018 World Cup. But instead, Neymar's tournament was in reality, one big joke. Brazil crashed out in the quarter-finals to Belgium. Neymar managed just one goal all tournament long. The memes came out in full force against him, and from that point on, Neymar's career hit a decline. Neymar spent six seasons at PSG, and recorded 118 goals and 77 assists in 173 games. On paper, these are sensational numbers, but the reality is, bar the 2019-20 COVID hit season, Neymar's time at PSG wasn't what he or anyone thought it would be. For Neymar, the move was supposed to be the next step in securing the Ballon d'Or and being crowned as the best player in the world. But instead, what happened was a certain Kylian Mbappe came to the team and upstaged him. He had so many injury problems. His injury record looked unbelievable. Even the man he'd ran away from at Barcelona, became his teammate years later. Neymar tried so many times to go back to Barcelona and force a move away from the club, but it didn't happen. In the end, after the 2022-23 season, Neymar said goodbye to PSG as the club's fourth all-time top scorer and was headed to Al-Halal on a mega money deal. But only a few weeks into his new club, tragedy struck again. Neymar ruptured his ACL and meniscus, was ruled out for over a year, and hasn't played for the club ever since. Truth is, guys, Neymar's never really gotten the respect he deserves. But in his peak years, 2011-2015, he was by far the most exciting young talent in the world. On one hand, Neymar achieved almost all his personal goals before leaving Europe. He won the Champions League, won the treble, became Brazil's all-time top scorer, and played in three World Cups. But on the other hand, his career could have been so much more. And he knows it. He's still a real one, and that's because he subscribed to GoalZone.