Football star Neymar Jnr, returns to his childhood club after contract termination with Al Hilal Saudi Club. Image: B/R FOOTBALL ON X.
(The Post News)– Al-Hilal has taken to social media to confirm Neymar Jnr’s contract termination, stating that the club is thankful and appreciates Neymar for his contribution throughout his career with Al-Hilal and wishes him well in his career going forward.
Despite reportedly earning roughly $104 million annually, the 32-year-old forward, who is also a former Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain player, has only appeared in seven games since joining the team in August 2023. Neymar, who paid 220 million euros to join Paris Saint-Germain from Barcelona in 2017, was the subject of the largest trade in football history. He joined Al-Hilal in August 2023.
He went to the lucrative Saudi league after fellow superstars Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo and played for Brazil in a World Cup qualifier in October 2023, but two months after arriving in Riyadh, he tore a cruciate ligament in his left knee, causing him to miss a year of action.
Moreover, after making two fleeting outings for Al Hilal in October and November, he suffered a hamstring injury and has not played since. Jorge Jesus, the club’s coach, recently stated, “He is no longer able to perform at the level we are accustomed to. Unfortunately, things have grown challenging for him.”
Meanwhile, Neymar stated earlier in January that he wants to play in the US and Canada in 2026 and has previously stated that playing in the World Cup is his goal. He told CNN that he knows this will be his last World Cup, his last shot, his last chance, and he will do everything he can to play in it. MLS teams in the US have courted Neymar, but according to sources in Brazil, Santos, the team where Neymar established his name in his now-faded career, was in negotiations to have him come home.
Returning to Brazil would probably be the final opportunity for a man who has scored 79 goals in 127 games, making him his nation’s all-time top scorer. He was cast as Pele’s heir at the beginning of his career.
He joined Barcelona in 2013 after scoring 107 goals in 177 games for Santos. He became the youthful star of a team that also included Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi, and they won the Champions League in 2015 after defeating Juventus 3-1 in the final in Berlin. He scored the game-winning penalty in a shootout a year later, helping Brazil win the gold medal in men’s football at the 2016 Rio Olympics. In 2017, he was lured away from Barcelona by Paris Saint-Germain, owned by Qatar, for a record-breaking 220 million euros.
In the Covid-plagued 2019–2020 season, he and Kylian Mbappe, a prolific French forward, led PSG to the Champions League final, where they were defeated by Bayern Munich. He also won five Ligue 1 titles. PSG brought Neymar and Messi back together in the French capital, but the three with Mbappe could not work well together because of personal conflicts, and the Parisian administration forced him to leave in 2023 and move to Saudi Arabia.
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