

Brazil have not played a European team since beating the Czech Republic in a friendly in March 2019. In years gone by friendly meetings between the best of Europe and South America were a rite of passage pre-tournament. The hulking presence of the Nations League on the international calendar serves to confuse matters somewhat. Here is how the 32 teams are shaping up after the final international break. Game faces on, we're in the big time now. The time for experimentation, blooding fringe players and honing the starting XI is gone.

For many of those competing in Qatar there will be no more international fixtures between now and their first game at the tournament. A few minutes later, when Layún lost the ball, Neymar got it, and he scampered lightly up the pitch and passed to Firmino for Brazil’s second goal.In 52 days' time the World Cup begins. A viewer new to soccer might have thought he’d never walk again. For several seconds, Neymar’s body convulsed as though four million volts were coursing through it. His only more characteristic moment may have occurred in the seventieth minute, when the Mexican fullback Miguel Layún seemed to deliberately step on his ankle. In a hard-fought, generally thrilling match-haven’t they all been, at this World Cup?-it was a spectacularly Neymar moment, a little dash of thievish dazzle that Mexico couldn’t have prepared for and couldn’t possibly emulate. Willian played in a low cross and Neymar, sliding with his leg outstretched, poked the ball into the goal. As Willian surged toward the left goalpost, Neymar curled toward the right. Willian took the pass and made a quick move into the open space that Neymar had created by pulling so many defenders after him. As he passed the spot toward which Willian was moving, Neymar, without looking around, flicked the ball backward with his right heel. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of his teammates, the winger Willian, creeping toward the area. For a moment, he probed with it, cutting horizontally along the edge of Mexico’s area, dragging first two and then three defenders with him. In the fifty-first minute of Monday’s match, with the score tied at 0–0, Neymar took the ball on the left flank.

He’s one of the most flagrant and theatrical divers I’ve ever seen in soccer the sight of him flopping in unspeakable torment, only to hop up and trot merrily down the pitch once the referee has shown his opponent a yellow card, is more or less a weekly staple of the game. Compared to other players of his calibre, he seems to be relatively unpopular with fans, at least in the English-speaking world-or, anyway, at least on my Twitter feed, where he’s often criticized for diving. But it’s that illicit quality, that sense of having ducked the universe’s rope line, that makes him so dangerous.Īt the club level, Neymar is the most expensive player in the history of soccer, having completed a contentious €222-million transfer from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain last year. Neymar lacks that air of easy belonging no matter how much attention he receives, no matter how exclusively he occupies the other team’s defenders, he always seems to have snuck into the middle of a match in which he isn’t supposed to be playing. Ronaldo looks like he spent a lot of money to buy it. Messi looks like he was born on the soccer pitch. He flirts his way through impenetrable formations, he slinks, he charms the ball into the goal. The slender Brazilian forward, who scored one goal and assisted on another in his team’s 2–0 win over Mexico in their World Cup Round of 16 match, on Monday, slips through defenses, twists, probes, tickles, and slides. If Lionel Messi is a key, and Cristiano Ronaldo is a battering ram, then Neymar is a lock-pick.
