CAN WE EVER LOVE NEYMAR THE DIVER?
BEFORE the game’s distance was run, there was one of those acts of theatre from Neymar which stand between him and true greatness.
And it may leave many struggling to feel very much love if Brazil’s ominous advance towards a World Cup final yields them football’s ultimate prize.
They led by a goal that he had created and finished when, midway through the second half, Miguel Layun’s right foot rested on his right shin when retrieving the ball on the touchline.
The Spanish fourth official, Antonio Mateu, was close enough to find no fault, yet Neymar tumbled away to his right in an act of melodrama which took four minutes to conclude. Mercifully, no one saw the need to involve VAR. The Mexican coach, Juan Carlos Osorio, launched into a quite understandable attack on Neymar’s gamesmanship.
‘It’s a shame we wasted so much time for one player,’ he said. ‘The game stopped for four minutes and that’s very negative for football. It’s a man’s sport and there shouldn’t be so much acting.’
The controversy descended to low farce when Neymar arrived, as man of the match, to discuss the game and Brazilian journalists proceeded to frame questions to him about Osorio’s comments as an example of ‘a loser’s whining’.
Manager Tite refused to let Neymar discuss Osorio’s comments because ‘athletes talk to athletes, manager talks to manager’. When the delicate flower in question was asked by the Brazilians if he sensed ‘an attempt to undermine you’, he was willing to answer.
‘It is an attempt to undermine me. Before the last match, I didn’t speak to the press much. There would be people getting excited. Maybe they are showing off.’ It was deeply unattractive stuff, which ran against the grain of the No 10’s genuine piece of theatre — the sublime way in which he created and completed a 55thminute goal which essentially won the match for Brazil.
A moment’s vision was all it took. Brazil were already moving up the gears — driven on by the game’s outstanding player, Willian — when Neymar showed his capacity to see the game in different dimensions.
Taking the ball across the edge of Mexico’s area, he was aware of Willian arriving into space behind him, backheeled to him and spun away. He was in the six-yard box to slide home the Chelsea man’s returning cross. Yet the Mexico manager’s claim Neymar’s histrionics had taken the ‘pace’ out of the game and ruined his team’s tempo was pushing things.
Progressing beyond the last 16 to the elusive quinto partido (‘the fifth game’) has become a painful national obsession for a nation which has now fallen at this stage in seven consecutive World Cups.
But after 20 minutes of energetic pressing in oppressive heat and brief success in exploiting an apparent weakness — right back Fagner — they found the game drifting away from them.
There was quality supply from Andres Guardado and Carlos Vela but Javier Hernandez, who lasted less than an hour, was anonymous.
He was kept at bay by a defensively strong Brazil. They allowed Mexico just one shot on goal. Willian is everywhere in the team, dropping deep to support the full backs and somehow driving into the area. ‘Sometimes he suffers,’ Tite said last night. ‘He does have to do a lot.’
It’s not a cavalier Brazil side, driving through opponents at will in vast, billowing moves — but it is one capable of killing teams at a stroke. Do not be surprised if Gabriel Jesus — ‘a truck of a player’ as his manager described him last night — still emerges as one of the tournament’s standout players. He provided the first half ’s outstanding moment — faking to shoot, then driving past Guardado and Edson Alvarez to draw a sharp save from Guillermo Ochoa.
Neymar matched him in the skill stakes in the second half. First-time control with his studs and a first-time shot inches wide: the game was always in the No 10’s gift. He helped finished it, too, taking a ball that substitute Fernandinho had won back, driving into the area with it and crossing for Liverpool’s Roberto Firmino, another substitute, to tap in. Tite said in the aftermath that Neymar was ‘improving’ when it came to histrionics. ‘You waste your energy on things which are not to do with the play. You lose your focus,’ he admitted.
You lose admirers, too, even when you’re playing for the nation who look like they will take some beating. BRAZIL (4-3-3): Alisson 7; Fagner 5.5, Silva 6, Miranda 6, Filipe Luis 6; Coutinho 6.5 (Firmino 86min), Casemiro 6, Paulinho 6 (Fernandinho 81); Neymar 8, Jesus 7.5, WILLIAN 8.5 (Marquinhos 90). Scorers: Neymar 51, Firmino 88. Booked: Filipe Luis, Casemiro. Manager: Tite 7. MEXICO (4-3-3) Ochoa 7.5; Alvarez 5 (Dos Santos 55, 6), Ayala 5.5, Salcedo 5.5, Gallardo 6; Herrera 6.5, Marquez 5 (Layun 46, 6), Guardado 7.5; Vela 7.5, Hernandez 5.5 (Jimenez 59, 6), Lozano 6. Booked: Alvarez, Salcedo, Herrera, Guardado. Manager: Juan Carlos Osorio 6.5. Referee: Gianluca Rocchi (Italy) 7. Attendance: 41,970.