Neymar's Quest for Redemption: A Return to Glory
Neymar once looked destined to inherit the world. Now he’s fighting just to reclaim a place in it.
The Brazilian forward, long billed as the natural successor to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, never did get his hands on the Ballon d'Or. Injuries cut into his prime, stalled his rhythm, and slowly dragged him away from that rarefied conversation. At 34, back at Santos and searching for the sharpness that once terrified defenders, he finds himself in a very different race: against time, against his own body, and against the doubts that have followed him for more than a decade.
He remains a symbol in Brazil. From the moment he burst through at Santos in his first spell, Neymar carried the aura of a street artist let loose on the biggest stages. But the stepovers and goals were always accompanied by questions. Was he mature enough? Focused enough? Serious enough away from the pitch to turn brilliance into legacy?
Now the World Cup looms, and the stakes are brutally simple. Brazil are chasing their first world title since 2002. Carlo Ancelotti is assembling his first tournament squad as the Selecao’s head coach. Neymar is no longer the undisputed centrepiece. He is the wildcard.
The pressure on him has not eased. It has merely changed shape.
Cafu’s verdict: “Technically even better”
One Brazil legend, though, refuses to downgrade Neymar’s place in the game.
"For me, Neymar was technically even better than [Cristiano] Ronaldo and [Lionel] Messi," Cafu told The Times. "He’s had a brilliant career."
Coming from a two-time World Cup winner and former AC Milan captain, that is not a casual remark. Cafu has watched the arc of Neymar’s career from precocious Santos prodigy to Barcelona star, from Paris showman to injury-ravaged veteran trying to write one last chapter. For him, the ceiling never changed, only the circumstances.
And when the conversation turns to the World Cup, Cafu’s stance is just as clear.
"Any team that has a decisive player like Neymar needs that player," he said. "If Neymar is in good shape - physically fit, tactically fit, technically fit - it’s obvious he’s a player who decides games. But only Ancelotti can decide and only Neymar can know if he’s ready."
That is the crux. If Neymar can reach a level where his touch, vision and finishing outweigh the risk of another breakdown, it becomes very hard to ignore him. If he cannot, Brazil move on without the most gifted player of their post-Ronaldo generation.
Ancelotti’s Brazil, Cafu’s approval
Brazil, as a football nation, does not do quiet transitions. Ancelotti’s arrival as the first foreign coach to take sole charge of the Selecao has split opinion. Tradition collides with pragmatism. Some see an affront to the country’s coaching heritage. Others see a necessary step into a modern, globalised game.
Cafu is firmly in the second camp.
"I’m comfortable with it," he said. "Ancelotti is the most Brazilian Italian coach there has ever been because he has worked with so many Brazilian players. Brazil has modernised. Most of the best Brazilian players are playing in Europe and Ancelotti is European, but that doesn’t mean Brazilian football is European football. The Brazilian essence will always be there."
Ancelotti has already given a glimpse of his blueprint. He wants, in his own words, "an Italian defence and a Brazilian attack" – structure at the back, chaos with the ball. Cafu likes what he hears. That balance, he believes, "can work well" for a team that has often veered between romanticism and rigidity on the biggest stage.
The mission is stark: avoid a sixth straight World Cup without a trophy. For Brazil, that is not a drought. It is an identity crisis.
Golf, pressure and the weight of the shirt
Cafu knows what that pressure feels like when it tightens around a squad. His generation carried it into Yokohama in 2002, chasing redemption after the trauma of the 1998 final. Brazil, Germany, the world watching.
So what did they do on the eve of the final?
"We played golf," Cafu recalled, laughing. "We were in our hotel before the final in 2002 and everyone was sitting around chatting. Ronaldinho had a ball and a club in his room, which a team had given him as a gift. He got a plastic cup and put it in the corridor and started trying to hit the ball into the cup."
The image is almost absurd. One night from immortality, and the greatest collection of Brazilian talent of their era are hacking away at a makeshift hole in a hotel corridor.
"I’m terrible at golf but everyone was playing - me, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Lúcio, Roque Júnior, Edmilson - we stayed in that corridor for maybe an hour and a half. It was the night before the World Cup final and we were playing golf to have fun."
That is how they carried the weight: by briefly forgetting it existed.
Neymar does not have that luxury now. Every minute at Santos is a test, every sprint a data point for Ancelotti and his staff. Brazil’s new era is taking shape with or without him. The question is no longer whether he can be the heir to Messi and Ronaldo.
It is whether, at 34, he can still be decisive enough to force his way into a Brazil side that no longer needs him, but might yet be transformed by him.
