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On July 23, 2017, Gerard Pique tweeted a photo of himself alongside then-Barcelona team-mate Neymar. The Spaniard accompanied the tweet with just two words: “Se queda”, translated to “he stays”. Less than two weeks later, however, Neymar was announced as a Paris Saint-Germain player. The €222 million (£200m/$242m) fee that PSG paid to snare their man from Catalunya hasn’t been surpassed since.
Financial Fair Play? What Financial Fair Play? For PSG and their Qatari owners, the opportunity to sign one of football’s most marketable players was one that they couldn’t turn down.
But it’s not just the price that makes Neymar’s move one of the craziest in football history. This is a story of secret discussions, lucrative commercial opportunities, ambition, and ultimately, one man’s desire to step out of the shadows and become the centre of the football universe.