Opinion – Sandro Macedo: Neymar, solution in Qatar, not for the Qatari club

Last year, watching Messi leave Barcelona was like watching his mother and father get divorced. Trauma everywhere. This year, unexpectedly, it seems that Neymar is starting to gain the spotlight of the transfer window. News as surprising as the end of “The Sixth Sense”: “I see Neymar leaving PSG…”.

And it looks like that’s it. PSG no longer want Neymar, information released by El País and not denied by the club. PSG’s OP stands for Project, not Paris. PSG has had nothing to do with Paris for a long time – apart from the effort to keep Parisian Mbappé, but that’s coincidental.

In other words, who doesn’t want Neymar anymore is Qatar, which controls the Saint-Germain Project. It’s strange to hear that a team doesn’t want Neymar, the most skilled player in the world, who can’t be the best athlete in the world. But that’s another discussion.

Neymar is one of those players hated by all opposing teams, but who should be idolized by his club. What fan doesn’t want Neymar reinforcing his team, despite his off-field baggage?

At the same time, the discussion now is which team can shelter Neymar when he becomes no-club? The obvious answer would be Barcelona. Ney himself, as a boy, pouted (pout is something very French) at PSG and asked to return to the Catalan team, which he should never have left. PSG played hard and Neymar stayed – and there the relationship with the fans went up to the roof.

Real Madrid apparently doesn’t want to — but it would be fun to see him on the Merengue team after the flop with Mbappé. Bayern wouldn’t even have money to sell all the beer in Munich.

The English Premier League are left, teams with the money to pay for the number 10 of the selection. The first to come forward was Chelsea, a club with no problems with money, which can rip up something around 100 million euros from one year to the next, as they are doing with Lukaku. And Chelsea has coach Thomas Tuchel, who knows Ney, and defender Thiago Silva, a teammate.

There’s also Manchester United, which so far hasn’t moved much in the window. Have you ever thought about Cris Ronaldo and Ney tabulating in the same language? There’s also City (it would be swapping Qatar for the United Arab Emirates), a Barcelona team among the English, courtesy of Pep Guardiola. And there would still be my poor Arsenal, with its technical director Edu Gaspar, who worked with Tite and is remembered, among other things, for the famous interview at the Russian Cup, when he said that “it’s not easy to be Neymar”. At Arsenal, he would have the chance to train the chemistry with Gabriel Jesus, newly signed.

This week, Tite had to answer on the “Sexta Estrela” podcast, led by journalist Alexandre Lozetti, from SporTV channels, if Neymar was a problem. “He is not a problem, he is a solution. His position makes him make more mistakes, because in one that he does in creative terms he will be decisive.”

In fact, Neymar has one last chance to prove to everyone that he is a solution for anyone and silence critics — including this scribe. Unlike what happens with other superstars, his focus in 2022 should not be the Champions League, but the Cup. If he arrives prepared physically and mentally, he can make the difference technically. If Qatar no longer wants the player on their team (located in Paris), let Qatar surrender to the player’s talent on their lawns at the end of the year. Amen.
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Football gods do exist. And they have a keen sense of humor. How about this one: former referee Leonardo Gaciba stopped being a referee commentator on SporTV in 2019 to assume the CBF refereeing commission. After a calamitous period, with the arbitrations unanimously criticized, he was fired in April. A few days ago, he was hired by ESPN to be able to comment and badmouth refereeing again. It’s not funny?