On Jan­u­ary 29, Romario turned 58 years old. In hon­or of his birth­day, the for­mer world cham­pi­on with the Brazil­ian nation­al team threw a grand par­ty at a night­club, one of the guests of which was Ney­mar. How­ev­er, not every­one rec­og­nized the foot­ball play­er who appeared at the event. In media footage, the Al-Hilal play­er is dressed in loose, bag­gy clothes, but even through it it is clear that Ney­mar has gained con­sid­er­able weight.

The 31-year-old has not appeared on the field since Octo­ber 2023, when he was injured in Brazil’s match against Uruguay in the qual­i­fy­ing round of the 2026 World Cup. The for­ward was car­ried into the tri­bune room in tears, and lat­er doc­tors diag­nosed him with a rup­tured cru­ci­ate lig­a­ment and menis­cus of his left knee. The play­er under­went surgery and is now under­go­ing a reha­bil­i­ta­tion process.

In Decem­ber, Brazil­ian nation­al team doc­tor Rodri­go Las­mar announced that Ney­mar would miss the Copa Amer­i­ca, which runs from June 20 to July 14, 2024. He is expect­ed to be able to return to action by August. “There is no point in forc­ing reha­bil­i­ta­tion”, Las­mar empha­sized then. In addi­tion, the doc­tor not­ed that for the foot­ball play­er this injury was the worst in his career.

And Ney­mar moved to Al-Hilal in August 2023 from the French Paris Saint-Ger­main. Dur­ing his stay at the Sau­di club, he man­aged to play only five match­es and score one goal for his new team. At the same time, he also could not fin­ish the pre­vi­ous sea­son due to an ankle lig­a­ment injury and surgery.

Nev­er­the­less, Ney­mar remains the most expen­sive ath­lete in the his­to­ry of world foot­ball. His trans­fer from Barcelona to PSG cost the Parisian club a record 222 mil­lion euros. In addi­tion, the Brazil­ian is the top scor­er in the his­to­ry of his team: he has 79 goals scored in 128 match­es.