Neymar exclusive interview: Brazil star on beating Pele's record and the England players he most admires (2024)

With just days to go until the World Cup begins there is an increasing expectation that much of what happens will revolve around how Brazil, led by their flamboyant ringmaster, their number 10, perform.

That shirt is the most iconic in football, and those who wear it carry the weight of the sport’s most successful and eager nation on their shoulders. For the third successive World Cup, that burden falls on Neymar da Silva Santos – more commonly known as Neymar Jnr.

The Paris St-Germain superstar will be 31 in February and this could well be his last chance. The expectation, as in 2014 and 2018, is huge, indeed almost overwhelming. It feels now or never for Neymar, with Brazil’s coach Tite not shying away from what he expects and what represents success. Brazil are in it to win it and after qualifying last June, he boldly declared: “We reached the World Cup – now it’s time to be champions.” To do that they need Neymar to be at his best as he has been this season.

With 75 goals in 121 appearances he is just two behind Pele’s record as Brazil’s all-time goalscorer and will clearly expect to beat that total in Qatar (he has already jokingly bet that he will score at least five times). It is a pressure he welcomes.

“The World Cup is my greatest dream,” Neymar concedes in an exclusive interview with The Telegraph. “It has been since I understood what football was. Now I’m getting another chance so I hope to make it.”

There are 214 million Brazilians, and many more fans around the world, who hope he succeeds in ending a painful wait of 20 years without winning the World Cup. In our exclusive interview Neymar reveals more as he discusses:

• Who he believes are Brazil’s main rivals to win the tournament
• Which England players he rates the highest (including one who is not even in Gareth Southgate’s squad)
• What it is like to wear Brazil’s immortal number 10 shirt
• And the advice he would give to the young Neymar starting out at his first club, Santos (where Pele also began)

The first place to start, though, is inside the dressing room of the Parc des Princes in Paris. It is five years since Neymar became the world’s most expensive player when PSG paid close to £200million to sign him, with the club then only weeks later bringing in Kylian Mbappe and, last year, Lionel Messi. Ever since, there has been endless and often wild speculation as to whether this version of Hollywood FC can ever accommodate three of the biggest stars in football.

After all, did Neymar not leave Barcelona so he could emerge from Messi’s shadow and win the Ballon D’Or, only for both players to again find themselves at the same club? Were they then not usurped by the young, headstrong prince Mbappe who needed the French president Emmanuel Macron to persuade him to stay earlier this year and – allegedly – received the power to hire and fire to force him to sign his new deal, only to decide he had made a mistake and wanted out after all?

The dynamic is all the more fascinating as we head towards the World Cup. Neymar’s wildly talented, evocative Brazil are the favourites, Messi’s Argentina, constructed around him, are on a remarkable 35-match unbeaten run and Mbappe’s France are the holders of the fabled trophy.

In fact it would be a surprise if the winner in the Lusail Stadium in Doha on December 18 did not come from one of the three nations with one of those three players the spearhead.

So, with the tournament so close, have they allowed themselves to talk about what they expect and who among them might win it?

“Everyone obviously has high hopes for the World Cup and feels not anxious but excited. Everybody wants to be at the World Cup,” Neymar says.

“We don’t discuss it very much but sometimes we joke about crossing paths with each other in the final. I tell him (Messi) that I’ll be champion and win against him and we have a good laugh. Playing with him and Kylian is a huge pleasure. They’re two greats, with Messi long considered the best in the world.

“Kylian is a young player who’s been growing and showing his potential and still has a lot to grow. It’s always great to play alongside the greats, I’ve always preferred that because the chances of winning are higher.”

It conjures up quite the image – Neymar, Messi and Mbappe – light-heartedly debating who will win the competition that fuelled their imaginations as young boys and helped mould them into the superstars they are, as they dominate the game that captivates the world.

There is that added dimension that it might not be just a rejuvenated, fully-fit Messi’s last chance of winning it, now he is 35, but Neymar’s also. World Cups have been tough on him. In 2014, the pressure was almost overwhelming in Brazil and yet he carried his country until he suffered a terrible fracture to his back in the quarter-final against Colombia after a cynical challenge. It almost led to national mourning with Neymar later revealing that if the damage had been two centimetres to the side his career would have been over. Brazil won that tie but then, without their talisman, lost so traumatically 7-1 in the semi-final when they faced Germany.

Four years later in Russia Neymar again played well, but was thwarted from scoring an injury-time equaliser by goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, as Belgium shocked Brazil in the quarter-finals. Neymar was ridiculed by memes of his play-acting as he appeared to roll around searching for fouls before hitting back, saying it was part of a smear campaign to “undermine” him. Once again he has a point to prove.

“The ones I played in are special for me, one of them because Brazil hosted and the other one because it was my second World Cup. And I believe this one will also be very special,” Neymar says.

So what does he expect in Qatar?

“The World Cup is full of surprises,” he adds cautiously. “You get teams that unexpectedly get very far even in the competition even if many don’t believe in them. But I believe the favourites are Argentina, Germany, Spain and France. I think those four along with Brazil are fully capable of reaching the final.”

Given this is an interview with a British newspaper is he ruling out England’s prospects? “I really forgot about England but obviously they have a chance!” Neymar says, laughing. “I really like (Harry) Kane and (Jadon) Sancho. They’re two incredible players and I have a special love for them because I like players that have their qualities.” Clearly in Sancho’s case, Southgate does not share that “love” although it was no surprise that the winger was left out given his struggles at Manchester United. But it is clear why Neymar, arguably the world’s best dribbler, appreciates Sancho’s talents.

Getting an interview with a truly global superstar such as Neymar is a rare thing, and amid all the focus on football one fairly blunt question is obvious: just what is it like being him?

Beneath the baseball cap it elicits a knowing smile.

“I’m a normal person, despite all the pressure – being known around the world, wearing the number 10 and anything else my name entails,” Neymar says. “I try to be as down-to-earth as possible in order to be normal. I have friends and family just like everybody else. I’m a human being with feelings. Sometimes I wake up sad, other times very happy. My moods are as random as the next person’s. But I don’t feel too much pressure and I use that as strength. I’m very proud of who I’ve become as a person and a player.”

Has it become easier, though, as he has grown older?

“Certainly,” Neymar says. “Because you learn with everything you experience in life, from your mistakes along the way. No one’s born perfect and no one becomes perfect but you grow as life throws obstacles in your way. So it’s much easier to deal with this as the person I am today compared to when I was 22 or 23.”

Despite the apparent modesty ‘being Neymar’ is inevitably a global industry in its own right; just as it is with Messi, Mbappe, Cristiano Ronaldo and that extremely small handful of stars who transcend sport, culture and – controversially in Neymar’s case – politics also.

Remarkably, for example, his company, the one overseen by his father, Neymar Senior, is called NR Sports and has no fewer than 215 employees all dedicated to protecting, promoting and maximising his image. Neymar was once named the most marketable athlete in the world and became the first Brazilian sportsman to be on the cover of Time magazine. He has 181million followers on Instagram. It is a phenomenal industry built around one single asset: Neymar.

As he talks via this Microsoft Teams call from Paris and through a Portuguese translator, there is a picture on Neymar’s wall that depicts him as half Batman/ half The Joker and it appears to sum up the stark conflicts within his personality where he sees himself as both a superhero but also one with a devilish, villain-like edge that, on occasions, has taken over both on and off the pitch. He is hero-worshipped and hated.

That conflict is evident in Neymar’s championing of his humble roots, his awareness of where he has come from, with his father giving up his own failing football career and working three jobs to make ends meet, and yet there is the public support for the distasteful far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who lost the recent Brazilian elections. It is a move which has damaged his popularity among fans of the Selecao.

Little wonder the authorised three-part documentary series on Netflix is entitled “Neymar Jr: The Perfect Chaos” – it takes that title from a phrase used to describe his life by his friend and team-mate (at Barcelona, PSG and with Brazil) Dani Alves, who is in the squad for Qatar despite being 39 – as it focuses on the forward’s remarkable career so far.

Would that career, however, be incomplete if it ended with Neymar not winning the World Cup? “No, in my career I’ve achieved things beyond my imagination. So, if it ended today, I would still be the happiest person in the world,” he tells The Telegraph and while – clearly – that is accurate given the trophies he has won, his achievements, the wealth and fame he has accrued, it would surely appear imperfect not to win Brazil’s first World Cup for two decades?

And it is that tournament that forms his earliest memories. “2002, which I watched with my dad and family when Brazil won. I was buzzing,” Neymar says. “That’s my first memory from the World Cup, and properly following it.

“The 1994 World Cup I only watched videos after the fact but I still enjoyed some moments from Romario, who I liked a lot… I have many idols, many references for me. Pele, obviously, Ronaldo, Romario, Kaka, Ronaldinho Gaucho. Those are my favourites.”

Like three of those players, Neymar has worn the number 10 shirt for Brazil, for the past nine years, after initially wearing 11 when he made his debut aged just 18. It is the most evocative – and therefore the one that carries the most expectation – shirt in world football and even the subject of books on it. How does Neymar view donning that precious yellow jersey and the history within its fabric?

“It’s very relaxed,” he says emphatically, smiling. “I don't feel under pressure, quite the opposite. I’m happy to be able to wear the number 10 on the Brazilian team and make history. It’s a great pride and honour to be part of the group of players that wore it and I only feel happiness about it.”

It is quite a journey from a man who has lived his life unrelentingly in the spotlight since emerging at Santos before moving to Barcelona in 2013 as every major European club desperately tried to sign him. So what advice would Neymar now give to himself as that callow, willowy teenager with the preening mohawk haircut? “I would tell him to relax because it will all work out,” he says, smiling. “It’ll be hard and there will be times where you’ll suffer but in the end we made it.”

Neymar was talking to promote the Superdry Champion Experience. To enter the competition, go to:https://superdry.champion-experience.com/