Neymar da Silva Santos Junior (Mogi das Cruzes, February 5, 1992), commonly referred to as Neymar or Neymar Jr., is a Brazilian footballer who currently defends the Spanish club Barcelona and is the captain of the Brazilian team.
Neymar started his career in the youth of Portuguesa Santista in 1998 and transferred to Santos in 2003, and after six years, was promoted to the cast. In the year that made its debut with the professional team, Neymar was chosen as the greatest revelation of the Championship. The following year, he became the top scorer of the Brazil Cup with eleven goals, and the best player of the Championship, finishing the season with forty-two goals in sixty games. Nineteen, Neymar won the South American Footballer of the Year Award 2011, after finishing third in the previous edition. In 2011, he competed for the prize for Best World Player, which ended in tenth position; at the same event, it received worldwide acclaim for winning the Puskas Award for Goal of the Year, marked the defeat of Santos for Flamengo in a match of the Championship. Neymar was the main highlight of winning the Libertadores with Santos, triumph that led him to participate in the Club World Cup, where he was beaten in the final by 4-0 at Barcelona. After winning the 2012 Cup Winners' Cup, Neymar started receiving proposals from the same Barcelona team with which signed a contract in a controversial deal involving club president Sandro Rosell. In its first year on the team, Neymar won the Spanish Super Cup, but worldwide recognition and acclaim as one of the greatest players in the world occurred in the 2014-15 season, with the triumph of the Spanish League, King's Cup and the League of UEFA champions. In Barcelona, Neymar integrates MSN trio, formed with players Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez, described by journalists as the best attack in recent years in world football.
Neymar represented the Brazilian national team in the categories U-17, U-20 and professional. The main selection, he made his debut in 2010 at age eighteen in a friendly against the United States, where he scored a goal. Neymar has become the top scorer in the Under-20 South American Championship 2011 with nine goals, including two in the final in a triumph before the Uruguayan national team, leading the team winning the title. He was called up by then coach Luiz Felipe Scolari for the World Cup FIFA Confederations dispute of 2013, where he began to work with the jersey number 10, and ended up being chosen as the best player of the tournament, contributing to the Brazilian victory with a goal in the final against Spain. FIFA World Cup 2014, Neymar was the highlight of selection with four goals until suffering an injury in a vertebra of the spine in the game of the quarter-final against Colombia Squad, which made him the team desfalcasse by rest of the tournament.
