PSG’s record purchase of Neymar goes far beyond matters on the field

Andy West 01:16 03/08/2017
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  • Neymar.

    There has been an awful lot of speculation and conjecture about Neymar’s reasons for deciding to leave Barcelona for Paris Saint-Germain, but not that much the other way around.

    So exactly why have PSG been prepared to obliterate the transfer record to sign the Brazilian?

    There are two elements to the answer. Firstly, the footballing perspective.

    Following his miraculous performance in March’s incredible 6-1 victory when the two clubs met at Camp Nou in March, nobody knows better than PSG just how good Neymar is.

    He was incredible that night – not just in the final seven minutes, when he scored twice and created the winner for Sergi Roberto, but over the course of the entire game as he led Barca’s challenge to secure the most famous comeback in recent history.

    That was by no means a one-off, because Neymar delivered several show-stopping performances for Barca during his four years at the club and, at the age of 25, he has the potential to get even better.

    PSG are determined to convert their domestic supremacy – notwithstanding Monaco’s shock Ligue 1 title triumph – into success on the European stage, and it’s easy to have sympathy with their believe that Neymar can single-handedly turn them from contenders to winners in the Champions League.

    But this is modern football, so it would be naïve not to think that other forces are also at play, and this is the second element to PSG’s willingness to pay more money for a footballer than any other club in history: politics.

    PSG are owned by a branch of the Qatar government, which is also, of course, organising the 2022 World Cup amid a firestorm of criticism and controversy.

    By the time that spectacle rolls around five years from now, Neymar will probably be the biggest superstar on the planet, with Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo both almost certainly retired from international football if not the sport altogether.

    The value of having Neymar as cheerleader – or brand ambassador, to use PR-speak – for the moist contentious World Cups in history will be immense, and you can be absolutely certain that his contract also includes a commitment to 2022 photoshoots and press calls.

    Furthermore, don’t forget that Qatar Airways were Barca’s club sponsors until the end of last season, when a series of protests from fans forced the club to ditch the deal in favour of an alliance with Japanese technology giant Rakuten…is prising Neymar away from Camp Nou partly an act of revenge? We can only conjecture.

    In the current climate, it doesn’t take much imagination to conjure up other potential non-football explanations for PSG’s absolute determination to pursue Neymar, and the decision-making process was surely conducted in locations far away from the offices of the French club’s coach Unai Emery, whose task now is to build a team around his new uber-star.

    Just as PSG will have seen good football and political reasons to sign Neymar, there will also be negative repercussions on both those levels at Barcelona.

    The sporting significance is not yet known, and on the bright side at least new manager Ernesto Valverde has the opportunity – or even the obligation – to develop a new style of play, one which is less exclusively reliant upon the ‘MSN’ and more aimed at encouraging a coherent collective approach.

    Exactly how Valverde will attempt to mould his team is currently unknown, but the influence of Neymar was so great that he surely can’t expect to simply insert a new face on the left wing and hope for similar results.

    How Valverde and his players respond, however, the loss of arguably the second-best player in the world can only leave them weaker, and claims that Neymar’s departure could end up making Barca better are fanciful in the extreme. If they improve, it will be despite Neymar leaving, not because of it.

    Politically, the fact Barca have allowed such a pillar of their success – both in playing and in global terms – to leave could cause serious problems for club president Josep Maria Bartomeu, who was already facing a no confidence vote after a series of scandals.

    Barca have been caught completely by surprise by Neymar’s departure, both on and off the pitch. And it could take them a long time to recover.

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