Neymar’s murky €500m PSG deal: The truth behind football’s biggest transfer

Neymar finds himself in the middle of another whirlwind of transfer rumours as the summer approaches, with the Brazil international having grown used to the constant speculation surrounding his future.

The Santos attacker has spent his career in the spotlight, yet never more so than when he completed his world-record transfer from Barcelona to PSG in 2017.

It was a deal that shook the football world at the time and remains the biggest fee ever paid for a player – and by some distance.

But the published value of the move barely touches on the money that PSG ultimately spent on Neymar, as revealed by The Transfers Podcast Extra.

“It’s worth stressing the sheer value of this deal,” Ligue 1 expert Robin Bairner explained.

“You talk about the €222 million release clause, but on top of that you’ve got to remember that Neymar had to trigger this clause himself. In order to do that, PSG had to give him the money. He had to physically pay the money to Barcelona himself. And because PSG had to give Neymar the money first, that meant they incurred an extra €90-100m charge via French taxes on top of that. You’re looking at almost €330m already.

“On top of that, you’ve got Neymar’s wages, which were estimated at €300m over the course of five years, and you’ve got around €50m compensation to the player’s father.

“So the value of this deal is astronomical. It’s well over half a billion euro.”

In a fascinating insight into the biggest deal football has every seen, Bairner and Ronan Murphy explore the anatomy of the deal, how Neymar’s relationship with Barcelona collapsed and, ultimately, how the Brazilian would go on to become a flop at Parc des Princes.

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