内马尔与他的最后一届世界杯——选人到底在选什么

in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,

the Brazil national team announced

the 26-man squad for the 2026 World Cup.

When head coach Ancelotti

read out the name "Neymar,"

the venue erupted

in the loudest cheer of the whole event.

In that moment,

Neymar himself cried.

According to reports,

he cried for a long time.

Today, starting from this squad list,

we'll discuss a topic bigger

than "Neymar got selected":

when a team picks its players,

what is it really picking.

First let's get the facts clear.

Neymar

is 34 years old this year.

He is the top scorer in the history of the Brazil national team,

having scored 79 goals for the country.

That number

surpasses Pelé.

He is one of the most gifted players

of his generation.

But talent

and fate

are two different things.

Neymar's career

is, in fact, a story of

"always very good, but always just short."

When he was very young,

at Santos

he made his name.

Later,

he went to Barcelona

and, with Messi

and Suárez,

formed a famous attacking trio.

In 2017,

Paris, for a

record-breaking sky-high price,

bought him.

That was, in the history of football,

the most expensive transfer ever.

Everyone thought

that Neymar would, there,

win that most important trophy

and become the world's number one.

But that

never happened.

At the World Cup,

his story

is even more regrettable.

In 2014,

the World Cup was held on Brazilian home soil.

Everyone expected

him to lead the team to the title.

But he was injured during a match

and could not finish the tournament.

In 2018

and 2022,

Brazil also could not go all the way.

In that 2022 edition,

Brazil, in the knockout round,

lost a penalty shootout to Croatia.

The image of Neymar sitting on the grass crying

is one many people remember to this day.

You could say

Neymar has won everything,

yet also seems

to have always been missing that one trophy

he most wanted.

And then

came that injury.

In October 2023,

while Neymar was playing for Brazil,

his knee was seriously injured.

The doctors' diagnosis

was that the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee

had torn.

This is one of the injuries

athletes fear most.

Many people who suffer this kind of injury

never come back.

The two years after the injury

were the low point of Neymar's career.

He first went to

a club in Saudi Arabia,

but because of injuries

he hardly played at all.

Later,

he returned to Santos —

the place where he started out.

This February,

he had surgery once again.

After his return,

in the Brazilian league

he scored only four goals

and made two assists.

For someone who was once

a world-class player,

this kind of data

is fairly low.

So,

before the squad was announced,

many professionals

and many retired players judged:

Neymar

would very likely be left out this time.

And yet,

Ancelotti chose him.

And that brings us to

today's real question.

Ancelotti

is a very experienced,

old-school coach.

He has coached

almost every top club in Europe

and won countless titles.

In explaining why he chose Neymar,

the reasons he gave

are well worth pondering.

He did not say

Neymar was in the best form.

He said three things.

First,

he had watched Neymar for a whole year

and found that his physical condition

had been steadily improving recently.

Second,

it is experience.

This will be Neymar's

fourth World Cup.

The pressure of an elite tournament —

he knows it all too well.

Third,

and the most interesting point,

is Neymar's effect on the team's "atmosphere."

Ancelotti said

that in the dressing room, Neymar

is loved and respected by his teammates,

and he can make the whole team's environment

better.

Here,

there appears, within modern football,

a real contradiction.

Football today

relies more and more on data.

How much a player runs,

how many passes succeed,

how many goals he scores —

all of it can be precisely calculated.

By pure data,

Neymar's current performance

is indeed not good enough.

But what Ancelotti values —

some other things:

experience,

leadership,

the dressing-room atmosphere,

the team's "environment" —

these things

can hardly be measured with numbers.

So,

is Ancelotti's pick

a kind of romanticism,

or a kind of wisdom?

Both views,

in fact, have their merit.

Those who call it a gamble

have a clear case.

Neymar is 34,

just out of surgery,

and after the squad was announced,

in a club match

he again had a slight

calf injury.

To send a player like this

to play a long

and intense World Cup —

the risk is real.

But those who say it makes sense

also have a strong case.

Football in the knockout stage

is often decided

by a few moments.

And a player like Neymar

is exactly the kind

who, at the crucial moment,

can do what others cannot.

There is another point.

A team

is never just

the eleven players on the pitch.

It is a collective.

A veteran with prestige,

the lift he gives to young players,

his effect on the whole team's spirit,

is real —

it just cannot

be written into a data sheet.

What's more,

there is another layer of meaning

that nobody will say openly,

but everybody understands.

Neymar is 34.

This is almost certainly

his last World Cup.

A man who, for the national team,

scored 79 goals,

an idol of a generation —

his country

will want, in a

dignified

and warm way,

to bid him farewell.

Picking him for the squad,

to some degree,

is also a country

answering a question:

how do we

say goodbye to a great player.

Of course,

Ancelotti also left

one very clear-eyed sentence.

He said

Neymar will not necessarily be a starter:

"he plays if he plays well enough."

Being selected

does not equal getting on the field.

This shows

that this is not

a purely sentimental choice.

The door

has opened for Neymar,

but how far he can go

still depends on himself.

To close,

I want to step outside football

and say something more general.

This world

is becoming more and more "quantifiable."

We have grown used to using numbers

to evaluate a person:

grades,

performance,

all kinds of metrics.

Numbers have their advantages.

They are fair,

they are clear.

But this time,

Neymar's selection reminds us:

some important things

do fall outside the numbers.

A person's experience,

his effect on the people around him,

the way he does not give up

in hard times —

these things

are hard to score,

but they are real.

Finally,

I want to ask you two questions.

The first:

if you were Ancelotti,

would you choose Neymar?

The second,

and perhaps more important:

when we evaluate a person,

besides the things

that can be calculated,

should we

also leave a place

for the things that cannot?

These two questions

have no standard answer.

But they are worth

thinking about slowly.

Okay.

That's all for today.

See you in the next story.