Did Neymar exploit his apparent heir-apparent of Ronaldo and Messi?

If a human year is worth seven dog years, what is the equation between a civilian career and that of a professional footballer? Neymar turned 27 on Tuesday and next month, it will be 10 years since he made his professional debut. If he was working hard like the rest of us, he would have already exceeded half his life, maybe somewhere in the late forties. Nowhere near the end, but at the stage where the time you have left is less than the time you had.

Neymar was the next success of Brazilian football, the last of a long line of candidates who had to grow, organize World Cups and claim alongside Pele, still the GOAT for many, in addition to Zico, Romario, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Robinho. Before the 20th anniversary of their birth, they were all known as famous people and all had a clear destiny.

In many ways, though, Neymar has been touted as more than that. He was the answer. It was Brazil's response to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the two men who fuel the GOAT debate more than ever, escaping the infinite Pele-Maradona loop. With one of them, a native of colonial power, Portugal, who ruled Brazil until 1889, he shares a birthday and a love of social media. With the other, who comes from Argentina, his eternal rival of Brazilian football, he shared a locker room in Barcelona for four seasons.

Now, as Ronaldo and Messi continue to score and dominate their 30th birthday, Irony has decreed that the next major trick would be a player Neymar sees every day at PSG training: Kylian Mbappe, who was 20 in December but has already won a World Cup medal polish at home.

Which raises the question: did Neymar keep his promise?

The fastest way to the immortality of football is the repeated success with your national team. Here, the disc is mixed. Neymar's first Copa America in 2011 saw his Brazilian team eliminated in the quarterfinals on penalties. His second lasted 180 minutes because he was sent off and then banned for suing the referee at the final whistle.

World Cup? In 2014, he was not in top form and bore the brunt of expectations of 180 million Brazilians of hope and ghosts of the Maracanazo on his back. He wanted a below average Selecao for the semifinals, only to miss – and the 1-7 humiliation that followed in Germany – after having a broken vertebra.

Four years later, he landed in Russia after another injury and a huge shoulder injury. He tried to do too much at first, but reached maturity as the tournament progressed, before the Brazil tournament ended with a quarter-final defeat against Belgium.

That deprived us of Neymar's signature wearing a major international trophy – unless you counted the Olympic gold or the Confederations Cup, which you really should not – but does it matter? Do we really want to reopen this Pandora's box? Is the fact that he is already in the top 10 of Brazil in terms of international selections being the third of all time and that he has the right to retire from No. 1 in the two categories is enough to silence opponents?

Aside from the fact that he'll be 30 in 2022 – and there will be two more Copa Americas by then, including this summer in Brazil – what strikes you the most, it's that Neymar's club record suggests an awareness of wanting to make history.

Neymar could easily have left Brazil for Europe at 18, having already delivered his first national trophy. But he refused the contenders, staying to win the Copa Libertadores in Santos, their first since – who else? – Pele almost half a century ago. This is something that is often neglected in Europe: Neymar risked an unwanted tackle refusing him tens of millions of people to stay and make a bigger mark in his home country.

In some ways, he is linked to the choice he would make years later, shaking the Blaugrana summer 2017, when Paris Saint-Germain made him the most expensive player of all time and he traded the Camp Nou against the Parc des Princes. His critics spoke of a little more than greed (an increase of $ 40 million per season), his ego (he was out of Lionel Messi's shadow) and the style of the stuff : for all the hype of the front line of MSN (Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar), Barcelona have won only two league titles and one title in the Champions League in four years. Neymar spoke of this as a need to walk his own way. What better way to do it than to turn a suitor into a central?

You are tempted to be cynical, especially if you consider its commercial impact multiplied by more than 100 million Instagram followers, its meticulously changing look and a global marketing campaign fueled by Qatari funds. Still, if you think back a few years back, he said "no" to Europe, maybe you could possibly give him the benefit of the doubt.

He added that last season, his injury deprived him of his second leg against Real Madrid in the UEFA Champions League knockout round, which could make him lose the biggest goal in club football this year. season. and maybe you're wondering: has he just been unlucky?

Then, just as you feel sympathy, you think about how his transfers ended in legal wrangling (the first in Barcelona resulted in the imprisonment of President Sandro Rosell and the revelation that the club had falsified the fees tremendously, the second has an ugly quarrel about loyalty bonuses). And you consider how he is the standard-bearer of a certain type of prima donna footballer, so much so that a poll of French RTL radio revealed that 84% of those polled attributed to his "provocations" the ill-treatment he was undergoing from the defenders.

This is the contradiction of Neymar.