Debate: Chelsea should have joined the race for Neymar?

Santos FC have confirmed that they have accepted two bids for Neymar, believed to be Barcelona and Real Madrid, should Chelsea have shown their hand?

His club confirmed:

“In a meeting with representatives of the management committee of Santos FC, striker Neymar Jr was made aware of the offers received by the club and he will analyse them in the coming days before making a final decision.”

(Telegraph)

The player met with the club’s officials and no decision has been reached as yet.

It’s been reported for some time now that he had an arrangement with Barcelona but Real obviously fancy their chances and it wouldn’t have taken him this long to reach a decision if his heart was wholly set on Camp Nou. Chelsea spent time and money trying to butter up the player and his representatives a few years ago but at this stage it looks unlikely that we will reignite our interest.

The 21-year-old has scored 136 goals in 224 games but must leave Brazil in order to improve, despite Pele’s suggestion that he owes Santos, and will want to avoid plateauing.

I often see criticism of him on Twitter saying that he’s overrated and the likes of Joey Barton, who likes to quote philosophy he doesn’t understand, regards him as a ‘YouTube player’. I doubt there are many fans in Europe or anywhere that isn’t South America that watches Brazilian football regularly enough to judge his form for his club, but he’s scored 20 goals in 32 games for his country. I certainly won’t judge him on an average performance against England and if he wasn’t any good then some of the world’s biggest clubs wouldn’t be interested.

We’re lucky to have one of the best young players in Europe in Eden Hazard already and it’ll be interesting to see if the likes of him and Neymar will eventually be spoken about in a similar way to how Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are currently. Only time will tell and it’s probably too far gone at this stage for the Blues to make an approach.

Anyway, this is a topic that’s up for debate and we would love to read your thoughts – do you think Chelsea should have entered the race for Neymar or has that ship sailed?