Both Gold & Glitter

Messi and Neymar: two sides of football stardom, but their core lights the same way

- Bobby Ghosh

AS a child, I fantasised about my name going up on a wall at the Camp Nou, the home stadium of my favourite club, FC Barcelona. Four years ago, I achieved that goal… after a fashion. Blow-ups of two Time Magazine covers I had written, featuring Barca stars Lionel Messi and Neymar, went up in the press gallery of the stadium, and since I had cover bylines in both instances, my name went up on that wall too. It wasn’t quite the fantasy I had in mind as a 10-year-old—in that dream, my name would be added to the list of the club’s top goal-scorers, alongside such legends as Josep Samitier, Lazlo Kubala, and Johann Cryuff—but I’ll take it.

I am proud, perhaps inordinately so, of those two covers. Much of my career as a journalist has involved writing about conflict and geopolitics, but in truth my favourite assignments have always been sports stories. Interviewing Messi in 2012 is at the top of my list, followed closely by the Neymar profile in 2013; the two Sachin Tendulkar covers, in 1999 and 2012, rank third and fourth.

When I met them, Messi and Neymar were, respectively, two and one year away from the ultimate test of their greatness: the World Cup. Both would fail that test, under dramatically different circumstances. A quarterfinal injury meant Neymar couldn’t feature in Brazil’s 1-7 humiliation at the hands of Germany, and while Messi was able to carry Argentina to the final, he couldn’t find a way past the eventual champions.