Neymar’s father has spoken out in an attempt to clear the muddied waters surrounding his son’s controversial transfer to Barcelona from Brazilian side Santos in the summer of last year.
A media storm has engulfed monies that were, and were not, paid by the Catalan club to representatives of Neymar to secure his signature and a €10 million ‘downpayment’ given to Neymar Sr in 2011 has been sternly defended by its recipient.
Speaking with ESPN Brasil, the father of the 21 year-old superstar said: “It’s not a crime. They didn’t pay money to Neymar. They paid it to my company.”
“I put it towards insurance so that if anything happened to Neymar, if he got injured for example, I could afford to pay the €40 million (the total allegedly paid for first option on the striker).”
Neymar Sr then went on to explain that, had his son stayed at Santos for another year, even more money would have been made for his signature, as he would have been out of contract and a lack of transfer fee would probably mean more cash to Neymar Sr’s company, N&N.
“He could have left for nothing in 2014 and we could have got €120 million alone because there were clubs willing to pay that much. But I wanted to give Neymar peace to play at the World Cup this year, free from transfer speculation.”
The transfer debacle has already seen Barcelona’s president, Sandro Rosell, lose his job over the matter as further details of monetary agreements come to light.
