The Coupe de France final was supposed to not only be a straight forward win for champions PSG, but was supposed to be ‘Neymar’s final’. The Brazilian had just come back from a lengthy injury lay off, this was supposed to be his redemption.
It had all started so well for PSG who took an early lead through a brilliant long distance strike from Neymar’s Brazilian team mate Dani Alves who was looking for his 43rd trophy in his career. He made it to 42 with the league win which has since been confirmed as making him the most decorated football player in history.
PSG then made it 2-0 with a delightful goal from Neymar, there was surely only going to be one winner here, and PSG was about to pick up its 5th cup final trophy in a row. But the football Gods had not had their say.
Quite incredibly Rennes pulled it back and started to believe. An own goal made it 2-1 and a quick fire header that no goalkeeper in the world was saving made it 2-2. The game went to penalties and Rennes triumphed as PSG wilted. The scenes were simply incredible. PSG look stunned, but Neymar even more so after missing a chunk of the season only to experience this episode.
But there was more to come. Some fans could be seen screaming towards Neymar- all inaudible and to be fair it seemed to be just banter. But as the PSG players passed the fans to collect their trophies it all kicked off.
Allegedly a Rennes fan joked and said to Neymar ‘you should learn how to play football’. Then allegedly Neymar struck out at the fan as seen in video footage. It is unclear if it was a punch, slap or push, although wide media are reporting the incident as a punch.
More details need to be gathered and the French Football Federation will be doing that over this week. But if the fan really did say just that then Neymar is set to be in a lot of trouble. Some are talking that he could be looking at a 5 game ban, some even say that under French football rules it could be 8 games.
All of this feel like a huge meltdown for a player that was banned for the first 3 games of next seasons Champions League after his criticism tweet of UEFA when PSG were controversially knocked out of the Champions League against Liverpool.
Sometimes football is unfair, but it seems that Neymar can’t take that and he has certainly over stepped the mark in the Coupe de France. Is this the beginning of the end of his career at PSG? It could well be.
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