The Neymar Identity: football’s first real career commodity-player

“We no longer want flashy, bling-bling. It’s the end of sequins.” No, not the sequins. How about diamanté? What is the official position, Nasser al-Khelaifi, president of Paris Saint-Germain, on the embroidered epaulette?

In an interview with Le Parisien this week, Khelaifi took the chance to outline his vision of a new utilitarian PSG: a PSG staffed by hungry, flat-faced hair-shirt men who look like David May with toothache.

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In fairness, it was hard to square this vision of the brutalist, low-fi future with a simultaneous press release giving details of PSG’s sensational new NFT, designed by Jay Chou, a pop star, film director, art collector and magician. Each of these blockchain sequins depicts a tiger in “one of Jay Chou’s favourite poses”, made unique – seriously, bro – by “a randomised allocation process of tiger’s pose, clothes, accessories, background”, which definitely sounds like collectible high art to me.

“With time, these NFTs will find their usefulness within our common ground project in the metaverse,” PSG’s chief brand officer explained, which is, to be fair, one of the most coherent descriptions of whatever it is Paris Saint-Germain are actually doing you’re likely to find.

The chief subtext to all this is the future of Neymar Jr, from whom sequins tumble like divine dandruff, and who is entering another instalment in the drama series entitled: what exactly is Neymar doing? And how much longer is this going to happen?

Khelaifi refused to address the Neymar issue directly, although he made it clear “some will stay and some will leave”. A Neymar representative was quoted as saying “Neymar is motivated by the Parisian