Neymar trains with Brazil ahead of the World Cup. Photo: Yahoo Sports/Getty Images.
The sun is setting on the Brazil that taught many of us to love the game.
Ronaldinho. Kaká. Ronaldo. Rivaldo.
The memories remain.
The identity feels harder to find.
Brazil do not lack players. That has never really been the issue. Vinícius Júnior is still there. Matheus Cunha has already scored twice in this tournament. Endrick waits with all the promise young Brazilian forwards seem destined to carry.
But through the opening stretch of this World Cup, Brazil have not always felt like Brazil.
They have looked organized.
They have looked disciplined.
At times, they have looked cautious.
What they have not consistently looked is joyful.
That matters, because Brazil have never existed in football memory as merely another talented nation. Brazil became Brazil because the football felt different. It carried rhythm. Improvisation. Risk. Joy.
Joga bonito was never simply about tricks.
It was about expression.
That is why Neymar’s possible return against Scotland feels bigger than one player entering one match.
Neymar is thirty-four now. He has not yet featured in this World Cup because of a calf injury. Raphinha is unavailable with a hamstring injury. Rodrygo is not at the tournament after a serious knee injury. This is not Brazil at full attacking strength.
Yet Neymar carries something the others, talented as they are, cannot quite carry in the same way.
Memory.
He is not simply another forward.
He is one of the final bridges between the Brazil many of us grew up watching and the Brazil still trying to rediscover itself.
Maybe Brazil do not need Neymar to be their best player anymore.
Maybe they simply need him to remind them what their football is supposed to feel like.
Because this World Cup has repeatedly rewarded teams that understand themselves.
Haiti played with belief.
Ghana refused its assigned role.
Cape Verde competed without apology.
Those teams may not have Brazil’s talent, but they have played with clear identity.
Brazil, strangely, are still searching for theirs.
That is a strange sentence to write about the Seleção.
And perhaps the weight of Brazilian memory makes every modern side feel smaller than it truly is.
Maybe no team can carry the ghosts of 1970, 1982, 1994, 2002, and every yellow shirt that made the game feel like art.
But that is the burden of Brazil.
They are not only judged by whether they win.
They are judged by whether they remind us.
Neymar may not solve Brazil’s midfield. He may not restore the rhythm by himself. He may not be the player he was ten years ago.
But some players carry more than a shirt.
Sometimes they carry a memory.
And for Brazil, Neymar may still carry the memory of the game they once taught the world to love.