Opinion – Juca Kfouri: Neymar’s challenges in the 2022 World Cup

Neymar will go to the World Cup with a heavy load on his back.

He is expected to perform like Didi, in 1958, in Sweden; by Mané Garrincha, in 1962, in Chile; of King Pelé, in 1970, in Mexico; by Romário, in 1994, in the United States, and by Ronaldo Fenômeno, in 2002, in South Korea and Japan.

In a word: protagonism.

Role it could have played in 2010 in South Africa if it weren’t for Dunga’s blindness; in 2014 if the criminal entry of Colombian Camilo Zuñiga hadn’t taken place, who jettisoned him from the World Cup in Brazil; and in 2018, in Russia, if he had chosen to play football instead of throwing himself on the lawn to be laughed at by the world.

It is likely, according to him, that in Qatar he will have the last chance to immortalize himself in the history of Brazilian football, as a hero of the sixth championship.

At 30, Neymar finds it difficult to go through four more years in the search for a balance between the life of an athlete and that of a pop star. It must really be tough.

His performances at PSG seem to warrant the best of expectations, despite the French Championship not exactly being a reliable race track.

Neymar aroused antipathy in more than half of the Brazilian electorate by supporting the defeated candidate.
There are so many people rooting against him, even maliciously wishing that he gets hurt and left out like in 2014, that only if he scores a lot of goals will they forgive him.

Because he got into a fight exactly with the politicized part of the country.

Had he declared his support for Lula and the other had been the winner, the depoliticization of the sociopath’s supporters is such, just listen to what the rioters of the recent demonstrations of chororô say, and there would be no major problems. But not.

Even for his life as a poster boy, the selfish declaration of vote – without taking into account almost 700,000 dead, a good part of it due to necropolitics implemented in Brazil –, just because he had the presidential solidarity when being accused in a nebulous case of rape, will exact a high price. Unless it shines, because, we know, goals work miracles and victories in football have the power to overcome any resentments.

Adding to the challenge, Lionel Messi, 35, will also be obsessed with winning the title he lacks for Argentina, as are Karin Benzema, 34, for France and Kevin De Bruyne, 31, for Belgium.

Complicated, isn’t it?

We demand that athletes demonstrate politically and the few who face the slap end up slapped. It’s part.

Doctor Sócrates and Walter Casagrande Júnior also gave and took from the right, although their positions were, as they still are, well-founded, without involvement in sexual crimes or tax evasion.

Anyway, here it is done, here it is paid and all Tite didn’t want was the contamination of the selection by the electoral issue, just as they didn’t want the CBF and the supplier of yellow and blue shirts, some down, others up.

Neymar who dribbles Europeans, Africans, Americans or unlikely Asians and makes himself popular again with a good part of more than 60 million voters.

It will be difficult, but who said that being world champion is soft.

Only for Gérson, the Canhotinha de Ouro, who, at the end of the 1970 World Cup, the third championship, in the victorious locker room after the 4-1 rout over Italy, came up with this one on a radio station: “Now that ended, come to think of it, it was easy”.