Neymar must begin to write his PSG Champions League legacy now

Less than five months after producing one of the greatest Champions League performances ever seen, Neymar left Barcelona with the intention of transforming Paris Saint-Germain into an outfit capable of winning the trophy.

Now into his third season at Parc des Princes, the 28-year-old Brazilian has failed to inspire PSG to such heights. In both their previous campaigns their challenge has stalled at the last-16 stage – exactly the juncture his virtuoso performance at Camp Nou saw Barca win 6-1 and overturn a 4-0 first-leg deficit to bring the word ‘remontada’ into every serious football fan’s vocabulary.

Neymar’s two late goals that night helped to cement his legacy as the third-best football of his generation behind Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo and seemed to set him up perfectly for what many thought would be his peak years. 

PSG certainly believed so as they splashed out a world-record fee of €222 million (£200m/$263m) to capture him. Despite a return of 66 goals and 39 assists in the City of Lights, recorded with a ratio far superior to anything he had achieved previously in his career, major honours such as a Champions League or a Ballon d’Or remain elusive.

The expected on-field windfall from Neymar has not followed. Though PSG have others in their squad with match-deciding quality - Kylian Mbappe, Angel Di Maria and Keylor Navas to name but a few - responsibility lies with the Sao Paulo native if the chips are down.

He may have won the 2014-15 Champions League with Barcelona, but now there is no Lionel Messi to fall back on. This, so the narrative goes, is Neymar’s team. 

With the knockout stages of the latest addition rapidly approaching, the spotlight has once again turned towards the former Santos star, with the expectation in Paris that he finally leads them back into the latter stages of the tournament. 

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Luck, certainly, has counted against him in the recent past. Injury robbed him of the chance to play the second leg of the 2018 clash with Real Madrid, a tie in which the Parisians were comprehensively beaten during Unai Emery’s final season of the club, while he missed both legs of the humiliating exit to a poor Manchester United side last season.

That PSG have failed in each of the last two years should not be held against him. Indeed, his Champions League record with the Parisians is a decent one, with nine wins from 15 games, while two of the three defeats he has suffered have come against Real Madrid and Liverpool, clubs that subsequently went on to win the lot. Incidentally, the other came against Bayern Munich in an away fixture that was essentially a dead rubber.

His individual record, meanwhile, stands up well to scrutiny, though having been present for only one knockout match, his opportunities to test himself on the biggest stage have been scant. Still, a record of 12 goals and seven assists in the fixtures he has played cannot be sniffed at.

Injury concerns dog Neymar as a trip to Borussia Dortmund approaches. He has failed to play in any of PSG’s last four matches due to a bruised rib, and while he is expected to feature at Signal-Iduna Park, questions over his match readiness remain before an encounter that promises to be the Ligue 1 leaders’ toughest challenge of the season to date.

But the player’s attitude also remains under question. 

Hours after sustaining his injury, he attended his own birthday party at a Parisian nightclub apparently unencumbered, while last week he was photographed attending a fashion event in Dusseldorf as his side built towards a trip to Germany on professional business.

“For a normal person, it’s a grain of sand that won’t be very disabling, but for an athlete, it can by very limiting, like an amputation,” former PSG and France doctor Serge Dubeau explained to L’Equipe of Neymar’s injury, the nature of which has not been made exactly clear, offering an explanation as to why he can undertake such extracurricular activities but not necessarily play.

“The question is, will this pain stop him from being at his excellent best? It’s also a question of temperament. I don’t know if, for example, a Jean-Pierre Papin or a Lilian Laslandes would have thrown in the towel for that.”

Meanwhile, Brazil legend Cafu said last week when asked of his compatriot: “If he takes responsibility, he will be one of the best players in the world in the coming years.”

Physical problems have robbed him thus far of his chance to show both his character and his quality in Europe, but in the coming days the world should have a far better idea of whether Neymar really is capable of reaching the heights which his talent has so long promised.

This is when it really matters, this is when an era can be defined.