HIS DRIVEN DAD WITH GIFT OF THE GAB
THE MASTERMIND BEHIND THE DEAL THAT SHOCKED THE WORLD
WHEN Neymar Jnr shuffled into an office at the Nou Camp on Wednesday lunchtime with Barcelona directors Oscar Grau, Raul Sanllehi and Enric Tombas, to tell them that he was leaving, they were apparently stunned to hear him ask about the money the club owed his father. Neymar Snr has been a huge part of his son’s career since first noticing his prodigious talent at the age of six — and the money that has followed his success in Europe since he arrived from Santos in 2013 has only made the bond stronger. One joke circulating on social media on Wednesday was that Neymar da Silva Santos was already negotiating a pay rise for his son with Paris SaintGermain. That moment won’t be too far down the line. Neymar Snr was a striker, too, back in the early 90s in a Sao Paulo state local league. He quit at 32 to support his family, taking a civil service job and dedicated himself to one thing — ensuring his son had every imaginable opportunity to turn his talent into a successful career. He never missed a game and made sure many of them were seen by top scouts in Brazil. He had the gift of the gab and had them believing they were coming to see the new Pele. Brazilian journalist Agnese
Marra’s profile of the father in
El Mundo this week quotes Adilson Durante Filho, youth football director at Santos when Neymar was emerging. He told her: ‘He is a noble man, nothing like the unjust talk around him now.’ Neymar Snr soon allowed top Brazilian football agent Wagner Ribeiro into the tight family circle. Via Ribeiro, Neymar Snr took the player to Real Madrid’s youth academy aged 13 and was offered a job in the Spanish capital if he could move to Madrid with his son. Marra said he took the deal back to Santos and improved the player’s terms with the Brazilian club. It’s a tactic he has been using ever since and the method worked right up to last October, when Neymar Snr returned from meetings with PSG and told Barcelona just how much they needed to pay his son to keep him from the clutches of the French club. They paid up with a shiny new contract up until 2021 and a £40.5m signing-on fee due to his father. Around £22.5m of that is still owed. Barca hope they can find legal grounds to not pay the amount in full, but don’t bet against Neymar Snr winning that wrangle. When Gerard Pique posted his ‘He stays’ tweet accompanied by a photo of himself with Neymar Jnr last week, the memes replaced the player with Neymar Snr. But you can’t have one without the other.