Neymar Retires After Brazil’s Last-16 Exit
The curtain has fallen on one of the most storied international careers in Brazilian football. Neymar, the country’s all-time leading scorer, confirmed his exit from the national team on Sunday, moments after Norway dumped the five-time world champions out of the 2026 FIFA World Cup at the round of 16.
The 34-year-old came off the bench late at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and converted a penalty deep in second-half stoppage time. It was his first goal of the tournament, but it counted for little. Erling Haaland had already struck twice for Norway, and Brazil went down 2-1.
The stage carried a heavy symmetry. It was at the same MetLife Stadium, in August 2010, that a teenage Neymar made his senior debut for Brazil and scored his first international goal in a 2-0 win over the United States. Sixteen years later, in the same venue, he chose to close the chapter. “I tried, I tried. Now, it’s over. I started here; I finished here,” he told Brazilian broadcaster Globo Esporte after the match. He slumped to the pitch in tears at the final whistle and had to be consoled by teammates.
His farewell numbers are formidable. According to records of the Brazil national team, Neymar leaves as its all-time top scorer with 80 goals in 129 appearances, having overtaken the legendary Pelé in 2023. Only Cafu has earned more caps for the Seleção. He appeared at four consecutive World Cups, from 2014 through 2026, and captained Brazil to their first Olympic football gold medal at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016.
Yet the one prize he chased hardest always slipped away. Brazil have now failed to reach the World Cup quarter-finals for the first time since 1990, and their wait for a sixth title stretches on, the last coming in 2002. For Neymar personally, the World Cup remained an unfinished story. His most painful near-miss came on home soil in 2014, when a fractured vertebra suffered in the quarter-final ended his tournament and Brazil, without him, were thrashed 7-1 by Germany in the semi-final.
Injuries defined the final stretch of his career. After a glittering club journey that took in Santos, Barcelona, a world-record €222m move to Paris Saint-Germain in 2017, and a spell at Saudi Arabia’s Al-Hilal, he returned to boyhood club Santos in early 2025. A knee injury sustained in a World Cup qualifier against Uruguay in October 2023 had kept him out of the national side for a long stretch, and fitness doubts trailed him right up to this tournament.
His inclusion in Carlo Ancelotti’s squad was itself a surprise, a gamble that his experience might steady a young Brazilian side chasing a record sixth crown. A calf problem restricted him to just eight appearances for Santos in the season, and he missed Brazil’s opening group games against Morocco and Haiti. He featured for 15 minutes in the 3-0 win over Scotland that sealed passage from the group, his first international outing since October 2023, before coming on in the 67th minute against Norway.
Brazil now face a rebuild. “It’s the same thing we did this year,” Ancelotti said in his post-match news conference, describing the campaign as the beginning of “a new cycle” for the team. Captain Marquinhos appealed for patience, saying, “We ask that people will have the patience with the new generation and support them from the get-go.”
For Norway, the reward is a quarter-final against the winner of Mexico and England, and a first deep run at the tournament in a generation. For Neymar, it is the end of the road in Brazilian colours, on the very ground where it all began.