Why were Athletic's players angry at Neymar?

Neymar comes across as the Justin Bieber of football. An elitist player who has been hyped since he was born with fancy haircuts and celebrations who joined the dominant team of the 21st century in a shady deal where his father allegedly pocketed € 40M. He also dives. Ronaldinho was the people's champ. The guy with the rabbit teeth who joined Barca during the dark times, a player with less hype than David Beckham despite being 10 times the player. Neymar will never be as likeable.

Neymar did the exact same trick at 0-0 within the first 10 minutes of the Madrid game. Nobody cared. He wasnt doing anything other than what he has done a million times, it is how he plays. If it worked and he got the ball (like he might have if not blatantly fouled) and went on to put the ball in the net would it still be showboating?

Shame on LE for saying what he said btw, bitterly disappointed.

I would also like to ask, where does it end? What is the line you cant cross or your provoking?

Maybe I cant do a step over because we are winning the game?

Attempt a panna?

A backheel?

1 touch passing in triangles without trying to go forward?

And I thought Luis Enrique was a hard ass but he really seems like a pussy. Neymar did nothing wrong, Athletic Bilbao players need to accept defeat and humiliation by better players/clubs.

That said I agree with those who say that reputation has a part to play. Neymar is by reputation a wanker hence the overreaction whenever he does something unpopular.

Hope General Messi puts Enrique in his place.

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:So does Neymar he's been getting shit about it all season.

This classless stuff is funny, everybody wants football to be a robotic sport about stats and free of expression going by this thread.

It already is but this just confirms it.

Exactly. It's a shame really.

I think its not about trick. I believe Neymar had some confilict with that player during the game. Usually Neymar makes opponents angry by words or other gestures.
Same thing happened against atletico. He didnt do any trick he just wasted a little time during free kick and 3 atletico players was going to kill him. It was not about trick or humilating

Neymar is a thin weak guy so he is an easy target. Being an easy target makes neymar angry and he reacts in a bad way with words and gestures so at the end of 90 minutes he makes a lot of enemies

What a joke. This is professional football for gods sake. Those Atletico players are just salty cuz they suck and Enrique needs to grow some balls. I hope Neymar does these tricks more often without giving a single damn.

ranDOM 10 wrote:

Blue wrote:
When you watch Neymar and whenever he does his little fancy tricks, you don't get the same feeling. You get the feeling "really man now you decide to play like this when you are up 3-0" Same way Athletic players felt, Pique felt, and Enrique felt.

Way to generalize how we all feel when watching Neymar play. While I haven't been able to watch him as much as I would like, one of the main reasons I enjoy watching him is his flair. Why must we compare him to Ronaldinho? Neymar is free to play the way he likes - at the end of the day, those very skills are one of the reasons many people enjoy watching him play.

I'm glad he is still doing these things while at Barca. I remember Sanchez really seems to be a shadow of his skillful self when joining Barca. I understand the philosophy is different, but I don't agree with signing a player and then asking them to change their style so drastically.

Didn't generalize btw. Everyone has their preference no doubt, i said that is how Athletic, Pique, and Enrique felt.

I just don't find these gimmick tricks any entertaining. I feel they are cheap tricks, nothing magical or mesmerizing. Like fart jokes, or any other silly entertainment. Reminds me of CR7 earlier days at United where he did ineffective tricks. BTW in fact CR7 was criticized the same way in England.

I didn't compare Dinho to Neymar others did.

I should say i personally like watching Neymar play, not because he can do  rainbow flick or whatever that stupid thing is called. I don't care for that aspect of his game, but glidding past 3-4 players with skill and dribbling that i do enjoy.

I am glad that not many people think the same way...

M99 wrote:Hope General Messi puts Enrique in his place.

Yeah, its time Messi send him to bed...

Donuts wrote:lets just be real here.
people don't like it cuz its neymar, everyone liked ronaldinho, even madrid fans.
where as only brazilians and barca fans really like neymar.

mind you i am die hard Argentina fan...

Donuts wrote:lets just be real here.
people don't like it cuz its neymar, everyone liked ronaldinho, even madrid fans.
where as only brazilians and barca fans really like neymar.

Don't really think that's true. I for one love Neymar, except the diving. Always thought we should buy him.

Also this "controversy" is just as much of a bullshit as Ronaldo's celebration hate. People have some irrational hate towards a player and find every reason to hate on them.

Football is first and foremost, in my opinion, about playing beautiful, entertaining football while having fun and enjoying yourself. Neymar does that and he has every right to do any tricks.

If being down what, 3-1 really pisses you off. Then you should get another job, because that's as average result as they get.

nothing to see here...if you are going to be offended by showboating when you are down then play hard enough not to get an ass whooping. if that doesn't help, and you must foul to stop the showboating then execute a hard two legged tackle or a strong kick to the shin or ankle to properly convey your message. don't push like a sissy and start complaining like an old woman because of a dribble....its either you play harder and tougher next time or carry out your best goikoetxea impersonation.....all that crying and whining to the media that you got dribbled isn't going to cut it

urbaNRoots wrote:And I thought Luis Enrique was a hard ass but he really seems like a pussy. Neymar did nothing wrong, Athletic Bilbao players need to accept defeat and humiliation by better players/clubs.

That said I agree with those who say that reputation has a part to play. Neymar is by reputation a wanker hence the overreaction whenever he does something unpopular.

As a player he was, at times he resembled a holigian

As a coach, he seems very different. Seems so meek.

Is there a video on the incident? I was at the stadium and couldn't really see anything after Neymar's trick.
BTW, correct me if I'm wrong, but the referee gave the ball to Bilbao afterwards, right...? What did he whistle?? Foul from Neymar??

This is murder!!
I wonder what those Bilbao players could have done to neymar had he done this to them..
Poor defender

I don't think I would've been as angered as the Bilbao defender was in that situation, but I'm definitely less inclined to get angry than the average person is. With that being said, I completely understand why someone would be offended by it.

He's basically rubbing it in, adding insult to injury. He may not have intended to disrespect the other team, but I like to think that it's common sense that when a team is losing and some guy on the other team decides to try and show off by ridiculing a player on the losing team during the final minutes of a match, that's likely to be perceived as arrogant/disrespectful.

I attempted to do similar things plenty of times when I was a kid, and it was especially amusing when my team was steamrolling the other team, because I knew that it would piss them off, and it tends to be easier to pull off fancy tricks against a tired and unmotivated opposition.

In my opinion, it's quite immature and it's not exactly a sportsman-like thing to do - but to be honest, I probably would've done the same thing today if I was given the chance to do so. I have no shallow, squeeky clean image to uphold, and my actions reflect on no one but myself.

The way I see it, the "offense" was very mild, but he should've known better. This is just speculation, but I think he did know that he was going to piss them off, but he didn't expect such an exaggerated reaction to it. He wouldn't be the first player in an elite club to forget that a small mistake could get blown out of proportion due to the amount of attention and expectations that are synonymous with the biggest names in football.

Did Xavi told anything about Neymar's showboating?
They are referring sport but there is no such things published on sport.

Espn

sport

sumon_blue wrote:Did Xavi told anything about Neymar's showboating?
They are referring sport but there is no such things published on sport.

Espn

sport

Yeah Xavi said some things during his presentation for his new club.

"He needs to seriously think about how he should act. Maybe that sort of thing is accepted in Brazil, but it's a thorny issue in Spain," Xavi told Sport .

"He should reflect about it because he's an extraordinary, hard-working and humble lad, but he has that Brazilian attitude, according to which such things are part of the show, while here they're seen as a lack of respect."

http://www.givemesport.com/586851-xavi-neymar-needs-to-start-showing-some-respect

quite disappointing from him.

GMS also refereed sport.

All are in a paradox

Xavi needs to stfu. When Dinho was doing this week in week out Xavi didn't have the balls to say shit because he was a nobody. Same thing with that clown puyol. Stopped Alves and Thiago celebration saying "we don't do that here". O really...when Dinho was dancing you stayed back and kept your mouth shut as well. *bleep* clowns. No *bleep* balls.

I would have encourage more of that from Neymar tbh. Just warn him that he should be prepared to take a clean, hard challenge for the disrespect he just did. And yes, it was disrespectful what Neymar did, that's the point. Showboating isn't meant to please the opposition and it certainly doesn't have a specific time frame either to do it.

The annoying thing is that Nerman doesn't have the natural flair for those tricks. I mean both his rainbow flicks actually failed and went out of play against Mehdrid and Athletic.

Doc wrote:I would have encourage more of that from Neymar tbh. Just warn him that he should be prepared to take a clean, hard challenge for the disrespect he just did. And yes, it was disrespectful what Neymar did, that's the point. Showboating isn't meant to please the opposition and it certainly doesn't have a specific time frame either to do it.

Well, it's mostly frustrating when a player on the opposing team starts doing it when there's little time left of the match and your team is struggling to even out the result. I don't know why some people on here seem to be so baffled that someone would be offended by it

Fußball wrote:The annoying thing is that Nerman doesn't have the natural flair for those tricks. I mean both his rainbow flicks actually failed and went out of play against Mehdrid and Athletic.

He was probably just a tad nervous. It's definitely more fun to show off against big teams, when the amount of attention is at it's peak, but failure to do so is also more embarrassing.