The timing could not have been crueller. Just days after Carlo Ancelotti excluded Neymar from Brazil's squad for the upcoming international friendlies — citing fitness concerns ahead of the 2026 World Cup — Wayne Rooney appeared on The Overlap and told the world he had never considered the forward a truly elite player.
For Neymar, 34, currently playing in Brazil's Série A for Santos after the wreckage of his PSG and Al Hilal years, it was a week to forget.
Ancelotti's reasoning was measured. Neymar has been working his way back to fitness and the Brazil coach simply does not yet trust him to contribute meaningfully in competitive minutes. The World Cup, hosted across the United States, Mexico and Canada this summer, is less than three months away. Ancelotti has to build a squad. Sentiment is not part of the equation.
And yet the exclusion stings because Neymar has scored three goals and contributed two assists in five appearances for Santos since his return. He is playing. He is fit. He wants it.
The shadow that Ancelotti cited, and Rooney articulated differently, is the same one that has followed Neymar for a decade. The knee surgeries, the ankle surgeries, the ACL at Al Hilal, the 135 matches missed through injury at PSG alone. A player of extraordinary talent who never quite became the leader his talent demanded he be.
The statistics deserve respect — 79 international goals in 128 appearances, three World Cups, Olympic gold in 2016, a treble with Barcelona's MSN alongside Messi and Suárez. But the whisper that has always followed him — "imagine what he could have been without the injuries, without Paris, without the money" — will never go away.
At 34, still playing, still wanting, Neymar has one last chance to write a different ending. Whether Ancelotti gives him the page is the most compelling sub-plot of the 2026 World Cup.
