Manchester:In what has become an all-too-familiar sight, Neymar left the soccer field in tears after yet another injury this time with a torn ACL and meniscus.
Quite a contrast to Lionel Messi's smiles at Inter Miami and Cristiano Ronaldo's reenergized success with Portugal. Neymar damaged his left knee in the first half of Brazil's 2-0 World Cup qualifying loss at Uruguay on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the extent of the injury was confirmed by his Saudi club Al Hilal, which said he would undergo surgery.
At the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, a knee to the back from Colombia defender Juan Zuniga in the quarterfinals ruled Neymar out of the tournament with a fractured vertebra. Then last year in Qatar, there were more tears when Neymar feared an ankle injury would cut his tournament short. Instead, it was a loss to Croatia in the quarterfinals that prematurely ended his bid to win soccer's biggest trophy.
Ronaldo and Messi turned the Ballon d'Or award for the world's best player into a personal duel at the height of their powers. But the pair recently left elite European soccer behind, with the 31-year-old Neymar also heading to the Saudi league after years of being in the shadow of two of the sport's greatest-ever players.
Along with Messi and Luis Suarez, Neymar may have been part of a Barcelona forward line that won the Champions League in 2015, but he was never the main man.
Even his record 222 million euro ($270 million) move to Paris Saint-Germain in 2017 did not provide the platform for him to step out in front of Ronaldo and Messi as he failed to lead the French club to a Champions League title. Instead, it was PSG teammate Kylian Mbappe who emerged as the player most likely to establish himself as soccer's next icon.
In August came a transfer to Saudi Arabia as part of the oil-rich kingdom's bid to lure the sport's biggest names to its league and establish itself as a major force in soccer.
Ronaldo had led the way with his move to Al-Nassr in December. He was followed by Champions League winners like Karim Benzema, Sadio Mane and N'Golo Kante. But aside from Ronaldo, Neymar was arguably the biggest coup for Saudi Arabia after it had missed out on moves for Messi and Mbappe. Meanwhile, over in the United States, Messi opted to make the switch to MLS with Inter Miami.