You can only ask so much from your defenders. They try, and usually they mean well, but some things are just out of their control. This Neymar assist is a study on the beauty of that helplessness. He's been having his way with them for the entire game, and here the resultant fear has left them paralyzed. The four defenders ostensibly confronting the Brazilian are transfixed by his skill, waiting glumly for their cue as the ball dances at his feet. Before they can break out of that trance, he's beyond them, pulling back to Ivan Rakitic for the goal.
Credit: user penguin672232 on r/soccer
Athletic Bilbao, unfortunately, always seem to suffer Neymar at his best.
In the 85th minute of the 2015 Copa Del Rey Final, Javier Mascherano sent a long pass over Unai Bustinza, Athletic Bilbao's right back. That left the defenderin a full sprint against Neymar. He was always going to lose. Neymar got to the ball first and touched it towards the left corner flag. Bustinza attempted a wild tackle that turns into an Olympic gymnastics-style split, but his desperate lunge missed both ball and man.
Not content with merely beating Bustinza, Neymar slowed to square up against his man. Facing him, he waved his right leg above the ball, rather like a magician brandishing wand over hat ahead of some climactic trick, then pulled out a rainbow flick and tried to steal away with what was left of Bustinza's shredded dignity.
Bustinza had no option but to haul the escaping Brazilian down, more out of principle than anything else. Several irate Bilbao players rushed to Neymar as he was on the ground to voice their displeasure at seeing their teammate so thoroughly embarrassed. Meanwhile, Neymar's own teammates came to his aid. Xavi, attempting to diffuse the situation as a captain should, pulled him under his right arm while using his left hand as a shield to hold the frothing opposition at bay.
Throughout the whole fracas, Neymar's face bore an expression of perfect nonchalance. Amidst angry hands, angrier eyes and an tempestuous, roaring crowd, he looked past everything, parked in his own personal Valhalla. It took until the end of the altercation, when the teams have disengaged and he's walking away, for Neymar to show the slightest reaction. Head down, he smirked.
That scene exemplifies Neymar's raw comedy. Joey Barton, famously critical, was to some degree right about him. Neymar is brilliant on YouTube: one could lose hours on end down the rabbit hole that is his skills compilations. And if he is, as Barton once pompously declared, the Justin Bieber of football, it's it's true that he's the young, popular and talented star who's put the effort in to realize his potential.
In a mechanized world, there's a charm in watching players fight back. The sport, bogged down in the grind of winning matches, is simultaneously crying out for those who can subvert grand context into immediate joy. It's screaming for audacity, for tricks and flicks, for dribblers who can score and assist but will also beat defenders for no other reason then the sheer joy of embarrassing them. For Neymar.
Neymar is one of the world's three best players in the world and he couldn't be more different to his peers. Take Ronaldo. If there was ever a personification of human drive, of the removal of every excess in the quest for glory, it surely lies with him. His newly released movie shows a glimpse of the loneliness of such an existence: the shot of Ronaldo, alone at the gym in his house, seems a cutting, if accidental strike through the propaganda of drive.
Messi, for all of his genius, also lacks Neymar's appeal. Beyond the dazzling runs, impossible goals and unattainable achievements is the truth that Messi is ... deathly boring. Or, if we're feeling more cynical, he's presented as such. The image Barcelona's homely, calm superstar against the flamboyance of Real Madrid and Ronaldo's intense too-handsomeness seems too perfect not to be deliberate. Messi plays the game because he loves it and his genius is natural and internal. After he's done, he goes home to his family and takes pictures wearing silly sweaters.
Neymar stands in stark contrast to both. During the match against Bilbao, he received a layoff from Alba, blitzed his way past six defenders, drove through the box and kept running to the far corner. The result of his balletic move was a simple layoff to Dani Alves. Messi, meanwhile, would have surely turned the dribble into a shot and Ronaldo, these days something of a poacher, would never have tried it in the first place.
That's not to say that Neymar is totally without end product. Minutes after that run, he put the finishing touches on a great team move by scoring an easy tap in. He celebrated by dancing with Alves, another player in his mold.
The 38th minute of the match gave us a nearly perfect demonstration of his personality and style. Barcelona's defense needed an outlet; Neymar ran back to the midfield to provide one. As the ball came his way, he was closed down by two Bilbao players. Rather than laying the ball back down and then moving to create space, he instead produced an absurd spinning backheel turn to beat them both, before being dispossessed by a third defender.
That moment ended badly for Neymar. But the freedom of self, the audacity and will to push the boundaries no matter the moment, is critical to his game and what makes him so fun to watch. In Neymar there's no fear of failure: his only limit seems to be his own imagination. So far it has been boundless.
Neymar is "cheeky." He irritates defenders and snobbish fans who posture as gatekeepers for the integrity of the game, then silences them by scoring and assisting so frequently that their rhetoric of the flashy-but-useless footballer sticks in their throats. He changes his hair every other day, he parties in Vegas with Michael Jordan, he shows up in videos drunk and singing his young heart out in Brazil. He takes pictures on top of expensive cars. He lives like a real 23-year-old millionaire, and he's too busy enjoying it to fake modesty.
In the last few minutes of that 3-1 win in the Copa del Rey final, Neymar -- with his Mohawk and bright shoes -- chose to rainbow the defender, to use his skill to add insult to injury rather than simply running down the clock. That moment wasn't just about making Bustinza feel bad about himself. It was ode to the Brazilians of Barcelona that came before him, and an expression of the hope that this silly sport still has room for fun.
Football needs its romantics, and Neymar is their chief.