Neymar returns to Brazilian club Santos after termination of contract in Saudi Arabia

Brazilian star Neymar on Monday ended his injury-plagued 18 month stay in Saudi Arabia as his club, Al-Hilal said they had "agreed to terminate the player's contract by mutual consent".

"The club expresses its thanks and appreciation to Neymar for what he has provided throughout his career with Al-Hilal, and wish the player success in his career," said a club statement posted on social media.

The 32-year-old former Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain forward played just seven times since joining the club in August 2023, despite a reported salary of around $104 million a year.

Neymar, the subject of what is still the biggest transfer in football history when he joined Paris Saint-Germain from Barcelona in 2017 for a fee of 220 million euros ($230 million at), joined Al-Hilal in August 2023.

He followed fellow superstars Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema to the lucrative Saudi league.

But two months after his arrival in Riyadh, he ruptured a cruciate ligament in his left knee while playing for Brazil in a World Cup qualifier in October 2023, which kept him on the sidelines for a year.

He returned for Al Hilal with two brief appearances in October and November but injured a hamstring and has not played since. He said he is targeting the World Cup.

The club's coach Jorge Jesus said recently: "He can no longer play at the level we are used to. Things have become difficult for him, unfortunately."

Earlier in January, Neymar said he was aiming to play in the 2026 in the US, Canada and Mexico.

"I know this will be my last World Cup, my last shot, my last chance and I will do everything I can to play in it," he told CNN.

While Neymar had been curted by MLS teams in the United States, reports in Brazil said Santos, the club where Neymar made his name in his now fading career, was in talks for him to return to his homeland.

A return to Brazil would likely be the last chance for a player who is his country's all-time leading scorer with 79 goals in 127 matches.

At the start of his career he was cast as the heir to Pele.

After scoring 107 goals in 177 appearances for Santos, he joined Barcelona in 2013, becoming the young star of a team that also featured Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, which swept to the Champions League title in 2015 by beating Juventus 3-1 in the final in Berlin.

A year later he scored the winning penalty in a shootout as Brazil won the men's football gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

In 2017, Qatar-owned Paris Saint-Germain prised him away from Barcelona with what is still a world-record transfer fee of 220 million euros ($230 million).

He won five Ligue 1 titles and he and prolific French forward Kylian Mbappe led PSG to the final of the Champions League in the Covid-blighted 2019-2020, but they lost to Bayern Munich.

PSG reunited Neymar with Messi in the French capital, but the trio with Mbappe failed to gel as personal rivalries got in the way and he was pushed to the exit, and to Saudi Arabia, by the Parisian management in 2023.

AFP