This Week's Wild Take: With Neymar's career at elite-level football now over after joining Al Hilal, there is a strong case to be made as to why he is football's greatest underachiever.
The world's greatest footballers in history are often characterised by a combination of their natural-born talent, their defining influence in the sport, as well as the prestigious individual and team accomplishments they earn. While Neymar certainly ticks the first box with flying colours, he seems to have fallen short of the latter metrics given that he was often considered a player of the same ilk as Brazilian greats Pele, Ronaldo Nazario and Ronaldinho in Brazil, who have arguably left a greater legacy than he has in football.
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For the Brazil national team, the 31-year-old has only ever won a gold medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and the 2013 Confederations Cup, while in contrast, Ronaldinho and Ronaldo won the FIFA World Cup, the Copa America, and the now-discontinued Confederations Cup. Pele, on the other hand, is unquestionably the Selecao's most successful player ever, having won a record three World Cups in three different decades (1958, 1962, and 1970) and is yet to be surpassed as the national team's all-time top goalscorer despite retiring from international football in 1971.
It is evident that Neymar falls short of the aforementioned trio and many other Brazilian greats if he is judged by tangible achievements on the global stage. Neymar announced his arrival in European football all the way back in 2013 when he was signed by FC Barcelona from Santos in a deal worth €88 million (R1.8 billion). During a glittering four seasons at the Camp Nou, he registered a prolific 105 goals and 76 assists in 186 games, according to Transfermarkt, and won nine trophies, including the 2014/15 UEFA Champions League title. His strike partnership with Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez is arguably the most frightening trio ever seen in the sport; however, he was the first to break that relationship when he forced his €222 million (R4.5 billion) transfer to Paris Saint-Germain in 2017, a world-record fee that is yet to broken to this day. It has been widely reported that the decision to abruptly leave Barca was at least partly inspired by his ambition to become the best player in the world and to move away from the shadow of Messi, who had already won five Ballon d'Or awards at the time.
However, Neymar disappointingly never managed to win the Golden Ball at PSG, nor the UEFA Champions League, which was initially one of the expectations put on his shoulders upon his arrival at the Parc des Princes. The fact that PSG signed then-18-year-old sensation Kylian Mbappe that same month in August 2017 didn't help Neymar's hope of being the main man as the Frenchman's arrival from AS Monaco on loan with the option to sign him permanently on a four-year contract put him against another generational talent. In the same number of seasons at PSG as Neymar, Mbappe went on to become the club's all-time top goalscorer with 213 goals to date, while the Brazilian has since left as only the fourth highest goalscorer in the Ligue 1 giants' history, behind Edinson Cavani and Zlatan Ibrahimovic too.
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Despite his undoubted once-in-an-era talent, Neymar has always lived in the shadow of a colleague at club level, and his €90 million (R1.8 billion) transfer to Al Hilal this month is perhaps his best shot at being his club's best player since leaving Santos at 21 years old. Many predicted that he would win at least one Ballon d'Or before the end of his career, but that now looks more unlikely than ever before, while a major international trophy with Brazil's senior national side has also evaded him, most notably the 2014 World Cup in his native country. Given the insanely high expectations that were attached to his career, Neymar is undeniably one of the biggest underachievers the game has seen.
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