Just about two months have passed since Neymar was stretchered off the World Cup pitch after a knee to the back from Colombia’s Juan Zuniga, an incident that ended the Brazilian superstar’s tournament and earned Zuniga death threats from across the world.
But just after the coin toss in Friday’s friendly between Brazil and Colombia, Neymar and Zuniga buried the hatchet.
And then Neymar buried the ball, lashing a free kick in almost as Upper 90 a fashion as possible.
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The Neymar goal was the match-winner, and came minutes before Colombia’s Juan Cuadrado condemned his side to playing with 10 men by picking up a second yellow card.
Here’s the post-coin toss moment:
And here’s the otherworldly set piece.
He’s pretty good, and it’s funny to theorize what would’ve happened had he not been injured for the semifinal match against Brazil. It’s easy to make hindsight 20/20 and claim Neymar wouldn’t have made a big difference in the 7-1 semifinal thrashing, but Brazil was clearly a side suffering from the loss of their leader (remember the Neymar tee shirts they wore?).