Apparently Barcelona are refusing to pay Neymar his 26m Euro loyalty bonus. Quite right too. Take note Mr Van Dijk.
I think you may be missing the point.
I think what Ted is dying is that PSG are trying to improve their brand and become more well known and near, with his 40m followers, will help them do that.
I read an article about his transfer saying that it is an entirely political transfer. It argued that the Qataris want to spend big to show their Arab neighbours that the sanctions against them mean nothing, that they’ve got cash to burn.
I love the fact that Neymar says it is nothing about moving out of Messi’s shadow and that he needs a new challenge. As has been pointed out, this “challenge” is not disimilar to moving to Celtic. If he wanted a REAL challeneg he should do what Kevin Keegan did and move to a much smaller club trying to compete in a tougher league - like us. If PSG win the Champions League, then perhaps he will be vindicated. But surely, if you are a quality player, you would want to play on the biggest stage week in week out, not just in CL football?
From what I’m reading, it seems like the general answer to the bolded is, in fact, a resounding ‘yes’ - its just that the Neymar transfer hasn’t pushed any of us over the edge in a ‘last straw’ kind of way I guess.
I think most of us were just resigned to a transfer of this magnitude happening sooner or later (The £80Mn transfer of Ronaldo from United to Real would have been a similar price in today’s market, so conceptually this was far from unimaginable).
Hrm, give it another 20 years or so. Its easy to kinda sneer at your typical African, Indian or South East Asian football ‘fan’ for being notoriously unconnected and disloyal to the teams they ‘support’, but hey? What else can they do aside from arbitrarily pick out a team from a country many of them will have never been to and probably have no connection to other than speaking the language and watching the Premier League. In the case of PSG they’ll watch the Champions League and plenty of them will similarly decide that they’re ‘their’ team. Why? well, why not? They’re not from Paris, but they’re not from Manchester or Barcelona either.
Most of them will support big clubs who win things. The odd oddball will pick out a plucky underdog for a bit of fun. Its always been that way.
I do feel like football is nearing the end though I must say. With the spending gap between the big, rich clubs and the small, poorer clubs getting wider and wider, football is fast becoming a European super-duper league by proxy anyway.
And you know what? I’m not sure I don’t get a certain glib satisfaction from it - particularly when watching the likes of Liverpool be eclipsed by the Barcelonas and PSGs in terms of spending power in a way that they’d be more than happy for themselves to have over the likes of little old Saints.
Enjoy the decline I say - and some of the football whilst it goes on.
There’s been such a rapid shift commercially, it’s a global brand, it’s international. The premier league is the most profitable football franchise. The player wage inflation is insane but must level out in time.
For the price of # Neymar you could buy every League One & Two club, plus Preston, Millwall, Barnsley & Burton (figures from @ Transfermarkt)
I still reckon neymar would win.
2 Likes
He would have to be like Pele in Escape to Victory