Brazil’s Neymar said he went to the dressing room and shed some tears alone following his return to the \u200bside after a gap of 981 days, coming on \u200cin the second half during Wednesday’s 3-0 World Cup win over Scotlandin Miami.<\/p>\n
The 34-year-old last featured for Brazil in 2023. He suffered a serious knee \u200binjury in October that year and has struggled to \u200bmaintain his form since then. He was initially \u2060a doubt for inclusion in Brazil’s World Cup squad.<\/p>\n
He then suffered a \u200bcalf injury last month that ruled him out of Brazil’s first \u200btwo matches in the tournament. But he finally made his international comeback against Scotland, with the fans chanting his name.<\/p>\n
“I went to the locker \u200broom, all alone, and I shed a few tears,” \u200bNeymar told reporters after Brazil finished top of Group C.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s an immense relief \u200cto \u2060relive all this. It\u2019s a moment of gratitude. I thank God for being able to experience this again.”<\/p>\n
Brazil’s all-time top scorer with 79 goals, Neymar has now appeared in four \u200bWorld Cups, with \u200beight goals and \u2060four assists in tournaments since 2014.<\/p>\n
“I had been away for a long time so it\u2019s \u200ba different team now, I see it with \u200bfresh \u2060eyes,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But I\u2019m very happy to have been able to come back and play in a World Cup and defend the \u2060Brazilian \u200bnational team after so many years.”<\/p>\n
Brazil \u200bwill play the runners-up in Group F in their second-round clash in Houston \u200bon Monday.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":38054,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-38050","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Brazil's all-time top scorer with 79 goals, Neymar has now appeared in four \u200bWorld Cups.","published_date":"","news_description":"Brazil's all-time top scorer with 79 goals, Neymar has now appeared in four \u200bWorld Cups.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38051,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38050\/revisions\/38051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=38050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}