From life he has had everything except the ambition to become the best footballer ever, despite the technical and physical skills to do so. Unlike Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi, who for more than a decade competed for Ballon d’Or and international trophies in the Europe that counts. By choosing to join CR7 in Saudi Arabia, O’Ney definitively renounces becoming what everyone in Brazil hoped for, while that imprudent comparison with Pelé will remain, but only in his nickname.
Neymar, the eternal unfinished
In the end it will probably be the disappointments of the successes that will define the career of an eternal incomplete, of the golden boy who, however, never had the strength and the character to snatch that Ballon d’Or from others, something has always been missing, even if for technical skills he simply seemed predestined. Messi’s almost obsessive constancy, or Ronaldo’s willpower, thus explains the difference also in terms of palmares with the other two sacred monsters. He has always stayed in the slipstream but has never managed to overtake, while now he is giving way and the scene to the new generation of Haaland and Mbappé, watching them from the desert dunes.
A single Champions
He has only won one Champions League, playing in a team built to win it, but very often he failed in the finals.
When Ronaldo and Messi, on the other hand, hardly marked visits. And so the criticisms began, even with the Brazil shirt, for a few dramas too many or a few dives on the pitch: he took a lot of beatings but sometimes exacerbating the consequences. Not those for the forbidden shot by Zuniga who in 2014 broke his World Cup dreams by destabilizing a Brazil that sunk against Germany shortly after.
The sweet life
There are those who underline how, compared to Messi and Ronaldo, he had other priorities, the turtleneck off the field, and the will – not too veiled – to attend his sister’s birthday: punctually every March 11 he ended up in the infirmary or among the disqualified so as not to get lost the party. He won the Brazilian championship, La Liga, the Champions League, Ligue 1 and with Brazil only the Conf Cup in 2013. He says goodbye to Europe which paid him 222 million in 2017 after a long runway, and many regrets.
1970-01-01 00:00:00
#parties #Brazil #risky #comparison #Pelé
