Neymar has contrived to complicate, now he must strive to simplify

It’s almost as if Brazil were waiting for the full time whistle to be blown.

On what was an incredibly torturous, if not especially tortuous afternoon at the Krestovsky Stadium, football’s most fabled darlings had nearly weathered a storm that never threatened to blow them away but stop them dead in their tracks.

The yellow shirts were oozing a great degree of relief – their joy, not frustration now the most eminent feature.

Amidst the omnipresent delirium, though, was Neymar, defining what a melange of disenchantment, glee and some more disenchantment is.

He wept his generally naughty eyes out on the turf where he had, by his own unusual standards, extraordinarily failed despite his late goal.

For once, he was not feeling weighed down by his self-inflicted pressure; he was feeling more liberated.

Even if temporarily, the burden was off his shoulders and on the pitch, where he had himself sunk to. In a well-prepared prebuttal posted on Instagram, the 26-year explained what had the tears stemmed from:

"“Not everyone knows what I went through to get here…The crying is of joy, of overcoming, and a will to win.”"

Beside an unnecessary rainbow flick, the timing of which wasn’t too felicitous, “the crying of joy and of overcoming” remains the only highlight of Neymar’s time in Russia.

It’s the only way by which he managed to be the centre of the world’s attention – but this isn’t exactly what you’d expect of the world’s most expensive player.

For someone who cost Paris Saint-Germain a hefty £200 million, a tap-in – and that too celebrated – isn’t enough; or put differently, for someone who is such a natural footballer blessed with Ronaldinho-like skills, an irrelevant goal isn’t enough.

All he has done so far at the World Cup is dribble (or attempt to), tumble, tremble, shudder and whinge.

As a result, rather than fulfilling his unrealistic dream of carrying the World Cup back home all by himself, he has been a mere spectator to whatever little moments of brilliance that his teammates have conjured.

There’s no shortage of those who would argue that the 14 fouls on him are to be partly blamed for his appalling displays, but he hasn’t helped himself by choosing melodramatics over football, as he famously did to earn a penalty against Costa Rica.

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Even Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are given a harsh treatment every single time they play, but why we don’t talk about fouls in their case as much as we do in Neymar’s is because they don’t choose to be mardy about it.

They choose to fight and that’s why they are the best of the generation. You will be fouled if you are that good – you can’t avoid it – but how you respond to it is what defines you as a player.

Neymar, it seems, has chosen to respond by complaining and resorting to even more desperate measures incessantly for 90 minutes, or perhaps by insulting Thiago Silva, whose only fault was that he returned the ball to Costa Rica after a stoppage.

"“He’s like a little brother to me; I try to look after him,” Silva told O Globo.“Today (Friday), he disappointed me, because he insulted me really badly when I returned the ball.He was right in that they had really got stuck into him, but we weren’t going to lose the game because of that one ball.”"

It’s quite clear that we are seeing a Neymar who isn’t very clear in the head about what he wants to do, how does he want to do it, and when should he do it.

He is dribbling when he needs to pass and diving when he needs to shoot. It does not take an expert to be able to see that, as his numbers reveal all that is required.

In two matches at the World Cup, he has been dispossessed 15 times (7.5 per game), has eight successful dribbles (four per game), made 87 passes (43.5 per game) and seven key passes (3.5 per game). In comparison, he was dispossessed 2.9 times, had 7.1 successful dribbles, made 66.8 passes and 3.5 key passes per game in Ligue 1 last season.

Yes, it’s unfair to compare a couple of games with a complete season, but you may pick any two consecutive league games, and you’d find that not once has he been dispossessed as much or managed fewer passes, while there’s only one instance where he had a worse dribble completion rate (Bordeaux and Lyon).

What the statistics point to is not a lack of effort, but an unwanted abundance thereof. The problem is that he has been trying too much in an attempt to be the unrivalled best of his team; however, that has only made others look far better than they are, and Neymar less of a class act than he is.

He has contrived to complicate, and now he must strive to simplify. Now, what could he do differently?

Stick to the basics. Sometimes, the mere realisation that you could do more by doing less can do a world of good. Neymar doesn’t have to crash to the ground at the sight of the opponent, neither does he have to carry the weight of Christ the Redeemer, because if he had to, then Tite won’t have brought the other 22 with him.

Next: Three underdogs who have impressed at the World Cup

It’s a team game, it’s a simple game, and sometimes, this is all you need to remember to not drop to your knees and cry.

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