On September 1, Neymar jetted away from Paris Saint-Germain, but his destination was the USA with the Brazil national team rather than Spain, where he had desperately hoped to sign for Barcelona or Real Madrid.
‘Se queda’. He stays. If the breakdown of his move back to Camp Nou was not exactly against the odds, it was certainly against the wishes of the player, the Catalan club’s fans and perhaps even certain members of the Paris Saint-Germain board.
With the Ligue 1 champions seeking to recoup a vast amount of the €222 million cash they paid to make the attacker the world’s most expensive player in 2017, an operation to prise him away from the French capital was always going to be tricky for Barcelona – particularly as they had already spent lavishly this summer on the likes of Frenkie de Jong and Antoine Griezmann to run up a transfer deficit in the region of €130m.