Neymar was supposed to be the guy who finally won Brazil the World Cup. Instead, he's been injured, benched, and playing in Saudi Arabia while the rest of the football world scratches its head. This is not how the script was supposed to go.

TL;DR: Neymar's career has collapsed from "possible GOAT contender" to injury-riddled Saudi Arabia substitute in the span of a few years — and the neymar career twist nobody saw coming is that he might never get back to where he was.

Let's rewind. In 2017, Neymar left Barcelona for PSG in a 222 million euro transfer. That was the most expensive signing in football history. The plan was simple: escape Messi's shadow, win the Ballon d'Or, cement his legacy. Instead, he spent the next six years getting hurt in the most creative ways possible. Broken metatarsal. Torn ankle ligament. Hamstring. Groin. At some point it stopped feeling like bad luck and started feeling like a medical textbook with his name on the cover.

Then came the move to Al-Hilal in Saudi Arabia in 2023. For roughly 90 million euros a year. I won't pretend I wouldn't take that deal. But for a player once mentioned in the same breath as Messi and Ronaldo, it felt like the final chapter arriving about ten years too early. And then — almost immediately — he tore his ACL. He missed almost the entire 2023-24 season. Out of 46 available games for Al-Hilal, he played in one. (Yes, one. As in the number after zero.)

Why the neymar career twist nobody expected hurts so much to watch

  • He was genuinely that good. Between 2014 and 2017, Neymar was arguably the best player on the planet. Not arguably, actually. He scored 105 goals in 186 games for Barcelona. Those are absurd numbers.
  • The PSG gamble made sense at the time. He was 25. Peak age. The move looked bold, not reckless. Nobody predicted six years of recurring injuries and early exits from Champions League campaigns.
  • The Saudi move closed a door. Elite European football essentially stopped being an option. No top club was going to rebuild around a 31-year-old with a shredded ACL and a history of missing 30 games a season.
  • Brazil still needed him. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar was supposed to be his tournament. He scored, played brilliantly when fit, and then got injured in the quarter-final loss to Croatia. Of course he did.
  • He never got his Ballon d'Or moment. That was the whole point of the PSG move. It never happened. Not even close. Messi won it seven times while Neymar watched from the treatment table.

My honest take on this

I think Neymar is one of the most talented footballers ever born. That is not hyperbole. The technical ability, the dribbling, the vision — it was all there. The tragedy isn't that he failed. It's that he was good enough to have won everything, and a combination of injuries, lifestyle choices, and one very expensive transfer decision meant he won almost nothing that truly mattered. No World Cup. No Ballon d'Or. One Champions League, won at Barcelona in 2015, where Messi was still the main character. He deserved a better story than this. So did we as fans.

The game that sums it all up

It was the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Brazil vs. Belgium. Neymar was fit, motivated, and playing some of the best football of his life. Brazil were favorites to win the whole thing. Then Belgium beat them 2-1, and Neymar spent most of the match rolling around on the floor after minor contact. (The internet clocked him spending 14 minutes total on the ground during that tournament. Fourteen minutes. That's longer than some people's commutes.) It became a meme overnight. And that image — gifted, dramatic, somehow both brilliant and frustrating — became the defining image of his career. There's a version of Neymar who channels all that talent into cold, relentless focus. We never quite got that version.

What is the biggest neymar career twist nobody saw coming?

Probably the ACL injury at Al-Hilal in 2023. He had already made the controversial move to Saudi Arabia. Most people assumed he would at least stay fit and dominate a weaker league. Instead he tore his ACL in a Brazil friendly and missed nearly the entire season. That was the moment it became clear this story might not have a comeback arc.

Can Neymar still return to the top level of football?

Technically, yes. He was born in 1992, which makes him 32. Players have come back from ACL tears before. But his injury history is so long and so varied that the realistic answer is probably no. European clubs are not going to take that gamble. A strong Al-Hilal run and a good Copa America campaign would be the ceiling at this point.

How much money has Neymar earned in his career?

Estimates put his total career earnings above 500 million euros when you factor in wages, bonuses, and endorsements. His Al-Hilal contract alone is reported at around 90 million euros per year. Whatever else happens, the man is not eating baked beans for dinner.

Somewhere out there, a 16-year-old version of Neymar is juggling a ball on a beach in Santos, and he has absolutely no idea what his hamstrings are about to put him through.