A Beginner's Guide to Neymar
How to appreciate one of the 21st Century's most under-appreciated superstars
By the end of the day on Wednesday, we’ll probably be talking about Neymar. If not, we’ll definitely be talking about him by the end of the day next Tuesday.
Back in the summer of 2017, Paris Saint-Germain paid €222 million, more than double the previous transfer-fee record, to acquire the Brazilian superstar from FC Barcelona -- and they acquired him to win games like this. PSG are underdogs against Manchester City -- betting markets give them about a 38-percent chance of advancing -- but they won’t feel that way.
“Our aim is to make the club an institution respected around the world,” Nasser Al-Khelaifi said back in 2017, six years after the Qatari take over of the club and one year before the signing that shook the soccer world to its core. “If we are going to make that happen, we have to win the Champions League. That will take the club to a new dimension. Any team that wins it is seen differently by everyone else.”
You know, the whole Super League fiasco shook out pretty nicely for PSG. They resisted the call from the jump and avoided the deserved opprobrium directed at the 12 clubs that tried to create the failed competition. Plus, Khelaifi himself has become arguably the most powerful man in European soccer. Last week, Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli shut off his phone and resigned his position as the head of the European Club Association, the organization that represents all 220 UEFA member clubs. Khelaifi quickly accepted the role as Agnelli’s replacement. New money in for old money. But the total takeover won’t be complete until, as he said, PSG actually win the whole thing.
And if PSG actually do win the whole thing, it will be in large part due to the presence of Neymar. Now, the 29 year old -- yes, he’s already 29 -- probably isn’t even the best player on his own team. Hell, he’s not even the best player PSG bought in the summer of 2017. However, that’s mainly because he just hasn’t played all that much -- due to injuries and let’s call them “family commitments”. Since Neymar and Kylian Mbappe arrived in Paris, the former has played 7,923 minutes in Ligue 1 and the Champions League, while the later is all the way up at 11,070 minutes.
Some more context: 515 players in the Big Five Leagues have played more minutes (in domestic and Champions League play) than Neymar. Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah leads all outfield players over that span with 15,730 minutes. Atletico Madrid’s Jan Oblak leads all players with 15,846 minutes -- or, exactly double the amount of time Neymar has spent on the field since PSG spent all that money to acquire him.
But man, when he’s on the field? There really might not be anyone better. It’s sort of impossible to experience Neymar playing soccer in any pure way now. The price tag makes it seem like anything other than ultimate success is equal to ultimate failure. Plus, a lotta people who watch soccer and especially a lot of people who get paid to watch soccer seem to truly dislike Neymar and what he means for the sport. The ambient noise of any Neymar performance is a light level of disdain bordering on disgust. A mid-size country could wean itself off of carbon emissions and power its national grid solely off of the collective volume of unoriginal “Neymar is a diver” jokes that are made every time PSG or Brazil play a high-profile game. Frankly, there is a not-insignificant portion of the global male population that would be a lot happier if they replaced “yelling at Neymar for rolling on the ground” with “going to therapy”, but we don’t need to get into that today!
Instead, let’s take a step back from the BS and look at what makes Neymar so good at the thing he actually gets paid to do: play soccer better than just about anyone on the planet.1
Shots and Chances
Basics first. The best attackers in the world tend to take a lot of shots and/or create a lot of chances. Neymar does both.
Among players with at least 1,000 minutes played this season, he’s fifth in shots per 90 minutes (4.52), behind Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Luis Muriel, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. That’s four of the five biggest superstars of the 21st Century, and a guy who’s been absolutely torching Serie A off the bench for Atalanta. As for chances created -- the pass that leads to the shot -- Neymar is 13th with 2.91. He’s the only player in the top 15 for both stats.
Put another way, Neymar has been directly responsible for 7.43 shots per 90 minutes this season. That’s more than La Liga’s Elche attempt -- as an entire team.
Expected Goals
Of course, volume only gets you so far. It’s gotta lead to something: bombing away from deep and rolling the ball sideways to a teammate so he can bomb away from deep could theoretically produce some gaudy shots and chance-creation totals without providing much value.
For the unfamiliar -- the Super League has brought in some new readers -- expected goals determines the historical conversion probability of any shot, based on a number of factors, including the field position, the positioning of the defenders, the body part the shot is taken with, and more. Some players are better finishers than others, but that only has a marginal effect; the best attackers (and teams) are the ones that rack up the most xG.
Among all players in Europe, only Muriel (1.09) and Borussia Dortmund’s precocious meathead, Erling Haaland (0.98), are generating more xG from their non-penalty shots and their passes per 90 minutes than Neymar’s 0.94. That’s only been converted into 0.51 goals+assists per 90 minutes, but the xG numbers, especially in his limited minutes this year, are a much better representation of the quality of his play.
Buildup Play
What about all the stuff before the shot or even the pass that creates the shot? You’ve probably heard the term “luxury player” before; I’m still not really sure what it means but I think it’s vaguely gesturing at the idea that there are certain guys who sit on top of the players who do all the dirty work and then get to revel in the plaudits of being the person who scored or created the goal. Neymar, what with his diving and fancy footwork, has unsurprisingly been subject to this line of criticism before.
It’s wrong. For starters, Neymar has been fouled 4.53 times per 90 minutes this season -- more than any player in Europe. But he’s not just getting fouled in the middle of the field with useless dribbling that’s slowing play down, either. The good people at FBref created a stat called “shot-creating actions'', which accounts for “The two offensive actions directly leading to a shot, such as passes, dribbles and drawing fouls”. SCA looks at the event that directly led to the shot and the event before it, and by including an extra event in the possession chain, it gives a fuller picture of the most influential players in terms of creating offense. Well, Neymar’s drawing 1.11 shot-creating fouls per 90, and no one else in Europe is above one. He’s also just creating more shots than anyone else, overall. He’s at 8.29 shot-creating actions per 90; second-best is Messi at 7.13.
Neymar can do things with a soccer ball that I’ve never seen another human being do, so he’s known for his dribbling ...
... but he’s also one of the best passers in the world. Another instructive FBref stat that shines a light on an important aspect of buildup play: progressive passes, which they define as “Completed passes that move the ball towards the opponent's goal at least 10 yards from its furthest point in the last six passes, or any completed pass into the penalty area. Excludes passes from the defending 40% of the pitch”. Here’s the top 10 for this season:
1) Lionel Messi, Barcelona: 9.58
2) Raphael Guerriero, Dortmund: 9.52
3) Joshua Kimmich, Bayern Munich: 9.30
4) Luis Alberto, Lazio: 9.27
5) Leandro Paredes, PSG: 9.16
6) Neymar, PSG: 8.97
7) Thiago, Liverpool: 8.72
8) Trent Alexander-Arnold, Liverpool: 8.68
9) Marco Verratti, PSG: 8.27
10) Marcel Halstenberg, RB Leipzig: 8.26
Eight of those players are either defenders or midfielders, which makes sense. Those are the players typically tasked with moving the ball upfield and they’re the ones with both teammates and space in front of them to pass the ball toward. However, there are two players who shoot and create like elite attackers but also move the ball upfield like elite midfielders: the greatest soccer player of all time and Neymar.
Dribbling
All that wild footwork, the apparent desire to publicly shame whatever defender’s standing in front of him? It works. Only two players complete at least 14 progressive carries per match -- same thing as progressive passes, but five yards instead of 10 -- and it’s the same two we just talked about: Messi (15.1) and Neymar (14.2). There’s no one better at beating a defender with a ball at his feet, either, as Neymar leads all players in Europe in completed dribbles per 90 minutes with 6.32.
Listen, Neymar is great at just about everything that an attacking player can be great at -- shooting, creating, dribbling, passing -- and contributes to pretty much all of the different phases of possession play. The guy is absolutely incredible; there’s no argument against it, so long as he’s on the field. If PSG are to overcome Manchester City, the winning goal will likely have Neymar’s footprint on it at some point.
But the thing that makes Neymar so compelling to me is that he manages to be maybe the most effective attacking player other than Messi despite sort of being Messi’s polar opposite. Every decision Messi makes seems to be designed to increase his team’s likelihood of scoring a goal. Even his dribbles are efficient, brutalist straight lines. Neymar, though, manages to be as effective as he is despite sometimes opting for entertainment over efficiency. Against Bayern Munich, the defending Champions League champs, he occasionally seemed to be more concerned with embarrassing Lucas Hernandez into early retirement than with putting the tie out of reach -- and yet he still absolutely tore Bayern to shreds over the two legs. That kind of insouciance might seem like an ineffable quality, impossible to quantify. But we’ve got a number for that, too. Neymar leads all players in Europe with 1.11 nutmegs per 90 minutes. You’ve made it this far; what did you expect?