Joey Barton, who has played for the likes of QPR and Newcastle United in England, and French side Marseille, has now decided to publicly praise Brazilian forward Neymar, but with some caveats.
Barton used to heavily criticize Neymar through his official Twitter account, and became an “enemy” of the player and the Brazilian people. He once tweeted: “Neymar is the Justin Bieber of football. Brilliant on the old YouTube. Cat piss in reality.”
On Monday, the Barcelona man is in Zurich as a finalist in the FIFA Ballon d’Or, awarded to the best football player in the world, along with Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Barton told Lance!: “Neymar had a very good season for Barcelona. Of course he has quality, but he is not on par with Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or even Luis Suárez.”
He added: “Problem is that I’ve used Twitter, where you can only write 140 characters. My criticism of Neymar was because of the hype that he received when he had done nothing. He was in the Brazilian league, had not shown anything very relevant for his national team, but was already considered one of the world’s best. People take everything very seriously on the Internet. They do not capture the sense of humor, the irony.”
Joey Barton, who has played for the likes of QPR and Newcastle United in England, and French side Marseille, has now decided to publicly praise Brazilian forward Neymar, but with some caveats.
Barton used to heavily criticize Neymar through his official Twitter account, and became an “enemy” of the player and the Brazilian people. He once tweeted: “Neymar is the Justin Bieber of football. Brilliant on the old YouTube. Cat piss in reality.”
On Monday, the Barcelona man is in Zurich as a finalist in the FIFA Ballon d’Or, awarded to the best football player in the world, along with Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Barton told Lance!: “Neymar had a very good season for Barcelona. Of course he has quality, but he is not on par with Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or even Luis Suárez.”
He added: “Problem is that I’ve used Twitter, where you can only write 140 characters. My criticism of Neymar was because of the hype that he received when he had done nothing. He was in the Brazilian league, had not shown anything very relevant for his national team, but was already considered one of the world’s best. People take everything very seriously on the Internet. They do not capture the sense of humor, the irony.”
