With Neymar, nothing is ever written.
While all the editorial staff were preparing to publish long accounts of his reunion with Barça and Leo Messi, his friend and former partner, all the work already undertaken will have to be put away in the drawers.
Victim of a lesion of the long left adductor on Wednesday evening in Caen, Neymar is unavailable "about 4 weeks depending on the evolution", specifies the club in a press release.
The captain of an evening in Normandy therefore suffers from a small tear.
As we suspected as soon as he left the field, he will therefore miss the first leg of the knockout stages of the Champions League, next Tuesday, and there is a good chance that he will also be deprived of the return, on March 10 at the Princes Park.
However, there is little hope for the second round.
We know that the medical staff generally foresee fairly wide recovery periods, and if the evolution of his injury is favorable, Neymar could find his partners for the return.
But here again we must beware of any prognosis.
Especially since the Parisian star is not known to operate express returns on the ground.
It will be necessary to take all the more precautions as the Parisian number 10 is experiencing his third injury of the season, not to mention the coronavirus which kept him away from the pitch for a few days at the start of the season.
This is also the second time in 2020-2021 that the “Ney” is affected in the adductors, which suggests weakness in this part of the body.
More broadly, it is his repeated injuries when the winter peaks that question.
Fortunately, we are not talking about a fractured metatarsus as in February 2018 and January 2019, already after the Coupe de France matches against OM and Strasbourg.
"I don't know if the problem comes from me or from what I'm doing in the field"
But because of this recurrence, Neymar will have played only 3 of the 7 games of the round of 16 that PSG have had to play since his arrival.
And maybe 3 out of 8, if his absence in the return against Barça is confirmed.
This is not neutral, because the only time Paris has managed to pass the milestone of eighth since 2016, it was against Dortmund last season with… Neymar twice at the helm.
One can wonder about Pochettino's decision to align him with such a match, one week before a crucial deadline for the club.
Neymar, he prefers to question his opponents.
"Sometimes I feel embarrassed by my style of play, because I dribble and I end up getting caught constantly, I don't know if the problem is with me or with what I'm doing on the pitch… It saddens me really, ”he wrote on Instagram.
Even if Neymar had to suffer faults on Wednesday night at the Michel d'Ornano stadium, his groin injury was not the result of a nasty gesture by Steeve Yago, guilty of a dangerous game on the Brazilian three minutes earlier.
“It really saddens me.
It makes me very sad to hear a player, a coach, a commentator or anyone say:
he must be stopped, he falls, he cries, a kid, spoiled,
etc.
Honestly it makes me sad and I don't know how long I can put up with this, I just want to be happy while playing soccer.
That's all, ”implores the Parisian star.
PSG express newsletter
Our information on the capital club
Subscribe to the newsletterAll newsletters
Difficult to disentangle the deep feelings and the communication strategy in this message.
The “Ney” never questions his ability to do everything possible to avoid these repeated injuries, he who recently declared that he could not “give up the party”.
It is however the least that one is entitled to expect from a genius of the round ball.