📝 Not just Neymar

Neymar will be going to the World Cup, having been selected on Monday by Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti in Brazil’s 26-man squad for the tournament in the US, Canada and Mexico.

While the decision felt improbable in the weeks and months leading up to the squad announcement, it became oddly inevitable on the day itself. The Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) organized a glitzy event in Rio de Janeiro to announce the 26 players, with wall-to-wall TV coverage and scores of B-list celebrities in attendance. With all the pomp surrounding the final announcement, leaving Neymar off the final list would have felt wholly anticlimactic.

Despite being hampered by injury, struggling to regain anything close to his best form and becoming embroiled in a series of off-field and on-field controversies, the popular consensus on the day felt clear: Neymar had to be selected.

There are questions over the pressure behind the decision. During the post-announcement press conference, Ancelotti was left visibly flustered by a question from experienced Brazilian journalist Paulo Vinicius Coelho, who asked why he had preferred Neymar, with 15 matches played in Brazil this season, over Chelsea’s João Pedro, who had racked up 15 goals in England, the toughest league in world football.

The flurry of pre-recorded ads that quickly appeared on Neymar’s Instagram page in the hours after the announcement sucked out any feeling of genuineness to the squad announcement surprise: the rumor and mystery, it seemed, had all been part of the plan.

The question now turns to the role Neymar will play at the World Cup, a debate sure to saturate the sports pages in the coming weeks.

But Monday was not the first circus built around a Brazil World Cup squad announcement, and it wasn’t the most controversial. Arguably, it wasn’t even the most controversial to involve Neymar…

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