BARCELONA: Neymar must pay 6.7 million euros ($7.53m) to Barcelona, a court ordered Friday after the player’s case against his former employer was dismissed.
After his world-record transfer to Paris Saint-Germain in 2017 the Brazilian forward sued Barca for 43.6 million euros that he claimed he was due for various bonuses.
But a judge dismissed Neymar’s case and instead sided with Barcelona, who had also sued their former player for breach of contract.
Neymar has five days to appeal the decision.
He joined Barca in 2013 and signed a new five-year contract in 2016, which included a renewal bonus worth 43.6 million euros, with 14 million paid up front.
The remaining 29 million euros was due to be paid on August 1, 2017 but Neymar left Barcelona on August 3 for Paris Saint-Germain, who activated the striker’s 222 million euro release clause.
Barcelona refused to pay Neymar the remainder of the bonus, insisting the terms of his contract had been broken.
The club in turn sued Neymar and requested the return of the 14 million euros they had paid him up front, as well as a further 8.5 million euros in damages.
“We express our satisfaction with the verdict announced today,” Barcelona said in a statement.
“The ruling has fully dismissed the player’s claim for payment of EUR43.6m, and has accepted a large part of the defense presented by FC Barcelona, as a result of which the player must return EUR6.7m to the club.
“Since the player’s representative is entitled to appeal this decision, the club shall continue to fervently defend its legitimate interests.”
Despite the financial dispute between Barcelona and Neymar, both the club and the player have been eager to be reunited.
There were even discussions last year about coming to an agreement out of court but a compromise could not be reached.
Barca spent most of last year’s summer transfer window negotiating a transfer with PSG but were unable to strike a deal, even as a number of different players were offered in exchange.
Neymar remains a popular figure among the leaders of the Barca squad, including Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, with whom he formed a devastating attacking trio during his time at Camp Nou.
“I’ve said it many times, as a footballer Ney is one of the best in the world and I would love for him to return,” Messi said in an interview with Barcelona newspaper Mundo Deportivo in February.
“He was always happy, he had fun both on and off the pitch. He brought a special sense of joy to the dressing room.”
Messi added: “He is eager to return, he was always regretful. He tried a lot to come back and that would be the first step in trying to get him here.”
Another attempt to re-sign Neymar was expected this summer but the financial implications of the coronavirus pandemic make an agreement even more unlikely.
“Neymar-type transfers will not happen,” said La Liga president Javier Tebas earlier this month.
Neymar was brought to PSG to help them finally win the Champions League but they failed to go past the last 16 in his first two years at the club.
This season, they are one of four teams through to the quarter-finals, which will be played in Lisbon in August, according to an announcement made by UEFA on Wednesday.s
Neymar ordered to pay Barcelona 6.7m euros
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Neymar ordered to pay Barcelona 6.7m euros
- After his world-record transfer to Paris Saint-Germain in 2017 the Brazilian forward sued Barca for 43.6 million euros that he claimed he was due for various bonuses
- Neymar has five days to appeal the decision
T20 cricket World Cup row overshadows India’s Olympic ambitions
- The World Cup schedule was delayed and now it appears Scotland could have to be drafted to replace Bangladesh
- Bangladesh wanted to follow the example of Pakistan, who will play all their matches in Sri Lanka under a deal
NEW DELHI: India hopes next month’s T20 World Cup will bolster its credentials as a global sports host — and the country’s Olympic ambitions — but preparations have been rocked by a diplomatic row with Bangladesh and accusations of political interference.
With barely two weeks until the tournament, Bangladesh have effectively been forced out after the International Cricket Council (ICC) rejected a request to move their matches from India to co-hosts Sri Lanka, citing security concerns.
“Our only demand is to play the World Cup — but not in India,” Bangladesh Cricket Board President Aminul Islam Bulbul told reporters on Thursday, adding that without a change of venue, the team would not participate.
India is preparing to host the 2030 Commonwealth Games in Ahmedabad, seen as a stepping stone to the 2036 Olympics.
But the chaotic build-up to the T20 World Cup has cast a shadow over those ambitions, especially with cricket returning to the Olympic Games at Los Angeles 2028.
The T20 World Cup schedule was delayed and not released until December and now it appears Scotland could have to be drafted to replace Bangladesh just days before the opening match on February 7.
‘NO ONE TO CHALLENGE’
“Bangladesh is a cricket-loving nation. If a country of nearly 200 million people misses the World Cup, the ICC will lose a huge audience,” Bulbul added.
“Cricket is entering the Olympics in 2028, Brisbane in 2032, India is bidding for 2036. Excluding a major cricket-loving country like Bangladesh would be a failure.”
The ICC said it had found “no credible or verifiable threat” to move Bangladesh’s games, and was committed to “safeguarding the collective interests of the global game.”
But that global game is dominated by India, where cricket is woven deep into culture, the economy and politics.
South Asia accounts for about 90 percent of cricket’s billion-plus fans, with India generating roughly three-quarters of the sport’s global income.
India’s supremacy stems from the outsized revenues of its BCCI cricket board, flush with cash from its role as custodian of the most popular sport in the world’s most populous country.
Sports journalist Pradeep Magazine wrote in the Tribune, an Indian daily, that the BCCI’s “staggering revenues... gives it unimaginable control over decision-making in cricketing affairs of the world.”
“There is no one to challenge India’s hegemony.”
ICC chairman Jay Shah is the son of Amit Shah, India’s powerful interior minister, and right-hand man of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
‘A POLITICAL ISSUE’
“Cricket has been captured completely by politics in a way that it never has been before,” Indian sports journalist Sharda Ugra told AFP.
“The Bangladesh issue has reached where it has because it’s a political issue.”
Political relations between India and Bangladesh have soured since a mass uprising in Dhaka in 2024 toppled Sheikh Hasina, now a convicted fugitive hosted by old ally New Delhi.
But matters escalated after the India Premier League (IPL) team Kolkata Knight Riders were ordered by India’s BCCI board to drop Bangladeshi fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman, triggering fury in Dhaka.
Mustafizur’s removal followed online outrage by right-wing Indian Hindus who invoked alleged attacks on a fellow community in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
Dhaka maintains that Indian media had exaggerated the scale of the violence.
Bangladesh’s interim government sports adviser Asif Nazrul said that “no one should have a monopoly” over cricket.
“If the ICC truly wants to be a global organization, and if the ICC does not rise and sit at India’s command, then we must be given the opportunity to play in the T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka,” Nazrul said.
Bangladesh wanted to follow the example of Pakistan, who will play all their matches in Sri Lanka under a deal hatched after India refused to travel to Islamabad for the 2025 Champions Trophy and all their games were moved in Dubai.
Nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan have fought multiple conflicts since they were divided at the end of British rule in 1947 and are bitter rivals on the pitch, refusing to shake hands in their recent matches.
“There is no one in the ICC who can stand up to anything that the BCCI says or does,” said Ugra.
“The BCCI and the ICC are the same thing at the moment.”
