Neymar Jr

Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior signed for Barça on 3 June 2013 after an agreement was reached between the Club and FC Santos. The then 21-year-old was Barça’s first signing of the 2013/14 season.
Born on 5 February 1992 at Mogi das Cruzes, in Brazil, Neymar began his footballing career at Santos in 2003 when he was only 11 years old and he quickly began to stand out in the club’s lower teams before making his debut with the first team in 2009 – soon becoming a fixture in the side and winning the Young Player of the Year in the Campeonato Paulista.
In 2009, Neymar was named the Player of the Tournament and was also the leading scorer in the Brazilian Cup with 11 goals. He was now a key figure in the team as Santos went on to win the Copa Libertadores by beating Uruguayan club Peñarol 2-1 in the final.
As South American champions, Santos played in the 2011 Club World Cup against Barça – who beat them 4-0, though Neymar was named third best player in the Tournament, behind Messi and Iniesta.
In his first season, Neymar played 41 matches and scored 15 goals, nine in La Liga, one in the Cup, four in the Champions League and one in the Spanish Super Cup, the latter his first ever for Barça, the equaliser in a game with Atlético Madrid. On September 18 he made his UCL debut against Ajax, and in the same competition he got his first FCB hat-trick against Celtic. He scored his first Liga goal against Real Sociedad but also missed a month of action that season with a foot injury.

2014/2015 was his breakthrough season in Europe. He was Barcelona’s second top scorer behind Messi, with 43 goals in 50 official outings. Neymar was the top scorer in the cup with 11 goals and joint top scorer in the Champions League with 10, the same as Messi and Real Madrid’s Ronaldo. Seven of those goals came in the last five games of the Champions League winning campaign.

Neymar first represented Brazil at the 2009 Under 17 Championships and following the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, he made his debut for the full international team in a friendly against USA, when  - still only 18 – he scored a goal. He was named in the Brazilian squad for the 2012 Olympic Games in London and helped take the team to the final, where they were beaten 2-1 by Mexico.

In the summer of 2013, just before signing for FC Barcelona, Neymar won the Confederations Cup with Brazil, scoring a goal in the final against Spain and being named MVP of the Tournament. Neymar Jr. made his official debut for the Club on 18 August 2013 in La Liga against Levante. The match ended with a Barça victory (7-0).

Neymar began playing football as a boy in São Vicente, under the guidance of his father, a former professional footballer who remained a close adviser and mentor throughout his son’s career. Having played street and indoor five-a-side football, Neymar joined Portuguesa Santista’s youth team in São Vicente, and in 2003 he and his family moved to Santos. There Neymar, who was already an impressive player, joined the youth academy of Santos FC (the same club for which Brazilian football legend Pelé starred over the majority of his domestic career). At age 14 he had a successful trial with Spain’s Real Madrid, and Santos had to increase its spending to retain him.

Neymar—a slender-framed 5-foot 9-inch (1.75-metre) forward—was supremely confident on the field, with excellent body control, quick reflexes, and explosive speed. He made his first team debut with Santos in 2009. While playing with Santos he averaged a goal every other match and helped the team win the Libertadores Cup (the most-prestigious South American club competition) in 2011. Neymar’s many individual honours with Santos included the South American Footballer of the Year title in 2011 and 2012. In June 2013 Neymar signed a five-year contract with FC Barcelona after a trade with Santos in exchange for €57 million (about $76 million), one of the most-expensive soccer transfers in history. Two years later he helped Barcelona win the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Champions League and the UEFA Super Cup.

Internationally, Neymar was considered for the Brazilian side that participated in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, but he was ultimately not included on the squad. Instead, he made his debut for the national team in August 2010, in a friendly match against the U.S., where he scored his first international goal in Brazil’s 2–0 win. He scored four goals for Brazil at the 2013 Confederations Cup, including one in the team’s 3–0 victory over Spain in the final, and won the Golden Ball as the tournament’s most valuable player as well as the Bronze Boot as its third highest scorer. Neymar starred for Brazil when his home country hosted the 2014 World Cup, scoring four goals in five games before he was knocked out of the competition with a fractured vertebra in the quarterfinals. Without the team’s most important player, Brazil lost by a shocking 7–1 margin to eventual-champion Germany in the semifinals. Despite his early exit from the tournament, Neymar won the Bronze Boot. At the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games, he led the Brazilian men’s side to its first Olympic gold medal, scoring the winning penalty in extra time of the final match against Germany.

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Off field, Neymar experienced legal troubles. In 2012 a Brazilian court ordered him and his father to pay substantial back taxes from 2007 to 2008. An appeal was denied in 2016, and that year a Brazilian court additionally found Neymar guilty of having falsified documents in order to avoid paying taxes on income received in 2011–13. The player and his father were also called into Spanish court after an investment fund that had sponsored him alleged that it had been defrauded during his 2013 transfer to Barcelona.