“Eu vou mas, eu volto!” Those are the words that Neymar famously scrawled on a wall in the home changing room of the Vila Belmiro in 2013 before he crossed the Atlantic to join Barcelona. His message to the Santos fans was clear: “I’m going but I’ll come back!”
Great things were expected of the prodigious 21-year-old who had been reared at the academy that produced Pelé. Brazilians hoped he would lead them to their first World Cup on home soil in 2014, erasing the hurt of 1950, and go on to become their first Ballon d’Or winner since Kaká in 2007. As we now know, these conquests did not come to pass.
