Decipher me or I’ll devour you, challenged the travelers to the Theban sphinx: “What animal has four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon and three at night?”
The answer lay within each passerby, the man, who a baby leans on his legs and hands when crawling, then only on his legs and older also on a cane.
Neymar the father, by projecting himself on his son, has prevented the ace from giving the right answer, a victim not of the sphinx, but of the Peter Pan syndrome, which, although it allows him to run with the ball like few in the history of football, does not mature enough point of planning what tomorrow will be like.
Tite is confident that from here to Qatar he will be at the peak of his physical and technical form, as well as hungry to win the missing cup in his victorious career, full of achievements and a lot of money.
The coach goes beyond hope, he has conviction, the result of conversations with Neymar. I hope.
At the age of 30, the new European season has barely started, the Paris Saint-Germain striker has made headlines again for having simulated a penalty in a friendly against Japanese club Gamba Osaka.
There is even a referee commentator who would call the foul, although I agree that he over-dramatized the play.
Neymar is undeniably an artist, like every exceptional athlete.
To paraphrase Fernando Pessoa when defining the poet, the artist is also a pretender, and “he pretends so completely that he even pretends that the pain he really feels is pain”.
Neymar reacted to those who criticized him. “Bunch of people who’ve never even kicked a ball and are doing shit,” he replied.
Nothing against the reaction if in fact he felt wronged – and maybe he even felt the pain caused by the invisible touch of the Japanese defender.
He just can’t forget that it became a global joke at the World Cup in Russia, lived by him on all fours, perhaps traumatized by what happened at the World Cup in Brazil, when he left with a cane and was almost unable to walk.
Nobody demands or expects Neymar to win the 22nd Cup alone, to carry the team on his back like Mané Garrincha, 60 years ago, or Diego Maradona, in 1986.
It will be enough to behave, in the field and outside, as the technical leadership of the Brazilian team, as an adult, willing to make the sacrifices imposed by the undertaking.
In the documentary about his life, an unconvincing detachment from the father figure was attempted, in an apparent simulation of controversy.
By leaving everything off the field to his father, Neymar will still have, in October, the headache of the trial for alleged corruption in Spain, due to the contracts made when he transferred to Barcelona.
It is obvious, whatever the sentence, that he is not responsible for the negotiations, which he probably only knew when he signed them. But he was already of age.
The Spanish Public Ministry asks for the arrest of him, his father and mother. Be mindful in the midst of preparations for the Cup.
Perhaps Neymar will never understand why he is what he is.
And, for not deciphering, be devoured.
Tite bets on the reverse. Let’s pray to be right.
Pandora’s box
To stay in Greek mythology, the new agreement between Corinthians and Caixa Econômica Federal keeps in the air everything that is bad since the first contract was drawn up — and stuck with the hope that one day the debt will be paid.
Who knows, in 2122, under the ruins of the stadium in Itaquera, the box will open again with the solution.
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