This is a record that is not about to fall. In the summer of 2017, PSG took out the checkbook to make Neymar Jr. the most expensive player in history. The capital club thus paid 222 million euros to settle the Brazilian striker’s release clause with FC Barcelona. Why did “Ney”, then at the top of his game and now at Al-Hilal, choose to leave his friends Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez to join Ligue 1?
Seven and a half years later, his father and agent Neymar Sr. returns to this XXL transfer and finally answers this question.
“Why did he choose to go to Paris? It’s strange. We didn’t know what Barça’s management was really thinkinghe says in an interview with Catalan media
ForçaBarça. It was as if they wanted ‘Ney’ to take a position he didn’t want. He didn’t want to be the first, the star of the team. »
Neymar’s father confesses
“I really wanted my son to stay in Barcelona and in the last days before his departure, we did everything to make him stay, but he left because he didn’t want to put himself in the place of the most big star of Barcelona,
he adds. He decided and said: ‘I will go to Paris where I will be just a member of the team.’ » To listen to him, the crack Auriverde would not have left Barça to emerge from the shadow of the eight-time Argentine Ballon d’Or.
Once at the Rouge et Bleu, the former Santos prodigy did not remain a player among the others for long. By his own admission, it was there that he played at his best level.
“My experience at PSG was good and badhe recently confided on RMC. Good because football-wise, I think I was at the peak of my career. And bad because I have been hurt for a long time and often. »
“My sporting years at PSG were surely the best for me. It was the best Neymar they had in my entire careerhe added. So I’m happy to have been able to offer this to French football. We must not forget that we took the club to its first Champions League final. I would have liked to win with PSG because winning a Champions League is like winning a World Cup with your country. »
