Neymar Jr. was so furious after not playing against Dijon FCO on February 12 that he refused to train the next day.
That is the juicy nugget of information from this report from Marca but the truth is that it’s completely false. In fact, here is a photo posted by the official Paris Saint-Germain Twitter account from a February 13 training session.
Et déjà une nouvelle rencontre à préparer ! ⚡️
🔜 #ASCPSG
🔴🔵 #AllezParis pic.twitter.com/bEoKu86rtd
— Paris Saint-Germain (@PSG_inside) February 13, 2020
Now, that’s either a photo of Neymar training or PSG used their financial resources to hire a Neymar lookalike to stage this photo to keep journalists from reporting on his absence. I’m going to go out on a limp and say that’s him. Just to be sure though, here is another photo of “Neymar” smiling at the post-Dijon training session:
The story stems from Neymar’s injury on February 1 against Montpellier HSC. The Brazil international went down with a rib injury that ultimately led to him missing four consecutive matches leading up to the UEFA Champions League meeting with Borussia Dortmund on February 18.
After the 2-1 loss to Dortmund, Neymar did criticize the club for not playing him leading up to the big Champions League clash but there were never any concerns that he wasn’t training or becoming an issue in the locker room.
Marca isn’t the only outlet that ran with this theory that Neymar refused to train. L’Equipe did the same but thankfully, journalists Miloud Kotbi and Jonathan Johnson used their platform to dispel=l the rumor.
As pointed out by @miloudkotbi, Neymar was pictured in PSG training on February 13. L’Equipe had claimed that the Brazilian skipped the post-Dijon Coupe de France session. https://t.co/SeXkUyRCdG
— Jonathan Johnson (@Jon_LeGossip) February 26, 2020
Stories involving controversy at PSG are lucrative for those in the content business. If Neymar is involved, it’s almost irresistible for publications, but this time, the media got it 100 percent wrong. Whatever happened to fact-checking in journalism?
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