NEYMAR NEYMAR NEYMAR NEYMAR: Have I Gotten Your Attention Yet? This Article Is About Neymar...Of Course...But In A More Interesting Way Than All The Others

                NEYMAR! NEYMAR! NEYMAR!: 

THE "YOU MUST BE KIDDING ME?" SAGA CONTINUED

          Barca Sporting Director Eric Abidal and board member Andre Curry have taken flight to Paris today, with one mission only: to secure the services of one Neymar Junior.
          After the PSG v Nimes match on Sunday, relations between PSG and Neymar have hit an all time irreversible low and so....that must mean Barcelona have to save Paris from this predicament they've created?
          PSG waited all summer, hoping for Neymar to change his mind and stay, but since it hasn't happened, now El-Khelaifi and his minions are in a bind. 
         The fans have turned on Neymar hardcore, 
the even-keel Mbappe shoved
the 
Brazilian 
during the 
French Super Cup celebrations 
and the transfer window in the EPL (the only league in which the Parisian club could've feasibly offloaded Neymar for anywhere near the price he was purchased) has already closed.
          So what?
          We could let shitting dogs shit and leave Neymar to his own devices (much like he did to us), weakening a future Champions League opponent at the same time. 
          Instead, we're willing to give PSG the veteran midfielder they've been dying for and a slight Neymar imitation in Coutinho?
          On paper it doesn't look as if we're improving PSG, though incredibly we would be: we're taking on a monumental financial burden and relieving them from the constraints of FFP (that they've danced with for a while now but especially when housing both Neymar & Mbappe), we're offloading two midfield players from our imperious squad and giving up on the 150 million dollar commitment we paid Liverpool for Coutinho after under two seasons.
            Now, it seems PSG aren't merely happy with Coutinho, they're adamant about receiving Nelson Semedo as part of the deal and the "cash" is reported to be 120 million...
           Negotiations didn't go well on the first day, with PSG reportedly incensed at our demands and gave Barca an ultimatum for Neymar. 
            Though talks will continue Thursday at a UEFA conference, Florentino Perez will also be in attendance to throw his large suitcase full of cash in front of El-Khelaifi and see if he bites.  
             Really, PSG aren't looking for funds they can reinvest later, they're looking for players in the present to secure their squad after losing such a talent like Neymar. Does this rule Madrid out? Sure...unless PSG take Bale hahah...just joking.
             I don't get the need to ship Coutinho off this early for Neymar of all players.

           We could just 
keep Coutinho & see 
if he develops into the 
all-star talent he was 
at times for 
Liverpool, 
though if he 
doesn't 
get going: 
on the bench he would sit...out of the way and we can sell him later.
          Coutinho could be our luxury attacker, especially since Malcolm has been unfairly (and stupidly) jettisoned to Siberia (literally). 
          At the moment, Coutinho's presence is almost a non-factor: we wouldn't take a hit on the pitch, we wouldn't absorb any more financial losses than we already have with the Brazilian and that would be the end of the story...no drama...just a player either being able to prove he's good enough or fizzing out as he's continued to do.
   But no...
we neeeeeed Neymar!! 
  We Neeeed him!! At all costs!
    Why?
    Why do we need an unfit, out of form player who can only muster half of a season?
             For all you Neymar fans, some film study would do you some good.



             If you watched the Neymar Years as 
they went down 
(highlight collections 
aren't always going 
to illustrate this
but full matches and results will), you'd remember Neymar collecting the ball out on the left wing, with plenty of time and space: Iniesta galloping on his inside towards the left side of the box and Jordi Alba often on the overlap on his outside. Neymar always ignored these runs and would usually go dribbling through three or four players before losing the ball, or he would use their runs as a decoy and maybe he'd notch a nice assist, yet it was always at the cost of the team.
          
          Throughout the buccaneering MSN Era, we were outscoring opponents, failing to dominate them. We would hardly hold on to clean sheets, there'd often be too much pressure on Marc-Andre Ter Stegen in goal, we'd have Neymar dancing on the wing and inviting those runs from Iniesta or Alba only to lose the ball with too many players caught up the pitch and allow counter-attack goal after counter attack goal.
             Against Juventus in the 2017 UCL Quarterfinals, Neymar was destroyed and exposed by Dani Alves.
            Alves let him dribble through Juventus, only for the containment tactic to work beautifully, stuffing the Brazilian to the farthest corners of the left wing, refusing to let Neymar cut inside on his right foot (his one effective trick) and allowing only left footed crosses and backwards passing options, something Neymar would never do (giving the ball away again).
             It wasn't just how he gave the ball away, it was where and how he did it. 
            Sure, Messi is dispossessed more than a lot of players, statistically speaking, though this only points to the amount of take-ons and dribbles Messi is attempting (the more attempts to dribble the more you'll somewhat equally be denied).
            Neymar was performing dribbles in the worst areas of the pitch, exposing our fragile back line and scattered midfield while he pranced across the entirety of the pitch, cutting inside on his right foot, a tracking player (or two or three in his grill) with the entire team wondering what in the hell he's trying to do.
            More than any of this: Neymar slows our game down to a grindhouse chickenshit station wagon that's as easy to dissect as it is to score on. 
             Just as deadly
 as a negative Valverde substitution, or as horrendous as an awful Coutinho launch into 
the sky from 50 yards, 
or as horrific as a 
shanked clearance
from Jeremy Mathieu, Neymar ground our game down to a halt and failed to allow the ball to roll away from his feet.
            After our treble winning season in 2015, a season capped by Neymar's perfect ball into the box to pick out a kniving Iniesta run, starting us off on our Champions League final victory over Juventus, Neymar stopped trying this kind of unselfish play.

    Sure, his numbers of assists went up & there were plenty of instances where Neymar showed fantastic unselfishness in the final third to lay it on for Messi or Suarez to tap home, but too often was the Brazilian Turncoat ignoring brilliant runs or failing to allow the all-important passing tempo of our game plan to build with his dominion over the ball.
             Every second Neymar 
is on the ball, wasting time
looking for a way
to get fouled 
or a way to
infuriate an opponent into a yellow card, Lionel Messi is being denied the ball to commit artistic delights before our eyes...and yet we should return to Neymar's arrogant histrionics? Going back to that type of play, after what we know now, would be an absolute disgrace.
            It was a disgrace then in 2016 and 2017 when Neymar could regularly be seen swallowing up the ball in the final minutes of tough matches against Atletico Madrid or Juventus (matches Barcelona lost), ignoring openings for his own selfish designs, doing the opposition's bidding by gradually waining the team, or even Lionel Messi's influence over the game.
            We cannot allow Neymar to come in, amongst an army of unselfish, though absolutely egotistical star players who've already bought into a philosophy (that has nothing to do with Valverde by the way) and let the former Santos man dictate terms on the pitch and in the dressing room. 
            Neymar isn't going to return to Barcelona humbled and ashamed, ready to work hard and put the past behind him, this will be a ready-made circus and a marketing executive's dream...which is what Barcelona, as a club, are becoming...fans and all.

            The look of the shiny thing is what matters...pay no mind to the fact the shiny thing is diamond encrusted shit. 
            Neymar cannot do this to Messi. 
            He cannot return to a dressing room already building something with an ambitious, massive squad and try to become the king. 
           He already 
had to leave 
to get out of 
Messi's shadow and all he did was trip over his own. 
             Griezmann, Dembele, Luis Suarez, Coutinho...they all desperately want to play...they all want to 
start (Coutinho? Yo?) though the point remains what would bringing in Neymar do to benefit the competition within the squad? If anything it would neutralize it, meaning no matter what, Neymar, the star, the king of the $$$ will have to start and you know our pee-brained and very afraid manager Ernesto Valverde would give in.
              He plays the stars...always...because then, no matter what the result, the blame will always somewhat rest with the players regardless of how the media chooses to frame the narrative.

  It was obvious what the story was at Anfield: Valverde historically failed by not starting the match with Malcolm (in lieu of the injured Dembele) and finish the tie off in the 1st half with an away goal, killing the Salah-less and Firmino-less Liverpool spirit.
             Instead, Valverde opted for the safe option and played the exact same team as the 1st leg: Roberto at right back and Coutinho at left forward, giving Jurgen Klopp the perfect blueprint to pick apart (and one he no doubt prepared for and surgically ripped to shreds). 
             So what will come of this, Ernie Valverde?
             He's kept calling for Neymar's arrival in press conferences, as has Bartomeu, pushed on by some of the delusional fans...and it's beginning to feel as if a serious inevitability is upon us...a reckoning.
             Why can't you just leave the big shiny toy be, Bartomeu? 
              Right now, Bartomeu is willing to put the future, the financial stability, the embedded philosophy of the club and Lionel Messi's final years as a Barca player on the line to keep his job...to cover his job in glory.
              And, if the core players are all behind this (Messi, Pique, Alba, Busquets, Suarez) then we feel they are also willing to put the context of their legend in shadow.
             Did you really need Antoine Griezmann, Ousmane Dembele, Luis Suarez, Frenkie De Jong, Coutinho (??), Lionel Messi, the best player on the planet aaaaannnd Neymar to win a Champions League again?
         Do you guys really need more than the riches we already have at our disposal? The front three combinations are innumerable with Messi, Suarez, Griezmann and Dembele, along with Coutinho who's the wild card capable of playing both in the front three and midfield (though he most excels as a LCM in a 4-3-3). 
            The myriad of midfield options in this squad are the best in the world at the moment, as well, yet here we are talking about loaning Riqui Puig out and buying Neymar for a bunch of cash, then in addition: sending Ivan Rakitic (who we could get 50 million+ for) and Coutinho (who we spent 150 million on) to PSG...then, we'd be on the hook for Neymar's wages. 
            We're talking
about transfer fees, 
but when we're 
discussing wages, t
hat's when things 
get a lot stickier 
and the plot thickens 
as to why we cannot pull off the Neymar deal logically, even while moving Coutinho and Rakitic. The Barca board also believe we can get some room on our wage bill to accommodate FFP by loaning RIqui Puig out and selling who knows how many other important players on top of that, which would be yet another disastrous set of bungles waiting to happen. 
            We know what happens when we loan our youth products out: their confidence is shot and they're never the same back at "home" at Camp Nou. Becoming a first team regular, let alone a starter in the Messi-era seems unattainable at that point, and that's why loan moves have very rarely worked out for La Masia products (just ask players like Gerard Deloufeu, Marc Bartra and Sergi Samper among many many others).
            Essentially, we're loaning out a midfield player and giving PSG two world class rated midfielders, all of whom collectively would create twice as much as Neymar this season (if played as much as Neymar feasibly could or would...remember, NeyNey breaks easy) all so we can make a tiny bit of room for Neymar's excessive and downright insane wage bill. 

            We already have too big of a wage bill as it is...offloading Coutinho and Rakitic does nothing to knock it down if we're saying "hello" to Neymar and his daddy's gigantic pay out. We'll then need to be prepared to look over our shoulders at FFP for the rest of his tenure...or are we all going to ignore that we had a former president, yes, a former club president resign and then go to jail over securing Neymar's services at our club? 
                Yes, his name was Sandro Rosell and his #2 was Josep Maria Bartomeu, the man going for Neymar now...again... 
            It crippled our club in the transfer market for an entire season, though the effects weren't noticed by our massive dash after many players (whether they were good or not is not up for debate...most sucked), rush-buying Thomas Vermaelen and Jeremy Mathieu among other shocking signings before the near 2 year transfer ban would take effect. 
             Exhibit A: We've had our club nearly ruined by one player before...and it wasn't Luis Figo, it wasn't Alfredo Di Stefano, it certainly wasn't Cristiano Ronaldo...it was Neymar.

             Exhibit B: He's wrong for our team and our system and Valverde wouldn't be able to resist playing him. Thus, we would never see the outrageous otherworldly talent of Ousmane Dembele flourish and thrive alongside Messi, Griezmann and Suarez. Dembele is a better player, human and talent than Neymar and has no ceilings on his talent...Neymar is nearly 30 and hurt every five seconds, more worried about his hair or who's taking free kicks or penalties than whether he's there for his team in the grind of a Champions League Quarterfinal 2nd Leg.

             Exhibit C: We can't afford him and even if we claim we can, we can't. Hell, we had to borrow money from Bernie Madoff's brother's uncle's daughter just to get Griezmann. But it's all good, right?

             Exhibit D: We don't need him. We don't need the headache. There's already enough drama at Barcelona, aka Soap Operalona with the Bartomeu era's public relations team chief among the perpetrators of the myths and lies about our own players. Things had begun to calm down into a focused, driven atmosphere in preseason, a vibe where winning and improvement took its rightful place over Valverde and any of his insanity and whatever idiocy Bartomeu was spewing out of his mouth or inserting into the media through his people. 
           Watching the Neymar Saga unfold is as if I'm on top of the roof of a large building in a huge city, watching someone walk a tightrope from roof to roof, little separating them from becoming nothing but a splat on the pavement below. 
          Do I watch...continue watching some more as the tightrope begins to crack and the threads rip and the person's feet flow out from underneath him like a jellyfish with mad cow disease, or do I go out and grab him? 
           Us fans have no control, but while TalkFCB and Barca Blaugranes may love Neymar for all the traffic he's bringing their pages, is it really for the good of the club? A club that doesn't exist only for your platform...but for all fans? Right?
        I've seen a shocking, sickening excitement for Neymar among Barca fans, including many who hated the Brazilian.
           Do we try and prevent our club from ever going out on the tightrope in the first place and say, hey, let's leave Neymar to the professional idiots aka PSG? 
            Well Bartomeu, this is the tightrope you've chosen...it'll only be a matter of time before the wires begin to break.