Barcelona have managed to enact a small measure of revenge.
The Catalan club have lost Neymar to Paris Saint-Germain in a world record transfer. They were compensated with €222m (£198m), but it's safe to say Barcelona would rather have their former number 11.
However, the club were powerless to stop Neymar joining PSG, as the French club bought him out of his contract by triggering the release cause set in his contract.
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Neymar was unveiled in Paris on Friday afternoon, and he disputed claims that he left Barcelona to earn £500,000 a week after tax, saying he's at PSG for the challenge. Whether it's the challenge of spending half a million pound a week or not, he didn't specify, but the 25-year-old stressed he stopped playing alongside Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez purely for football reasons.
He also claimed that his father and agent had urged him to remain at Barcelona. This, more than almost anything else the Brazilian said at the press conference, raised eyebrows.
Neymar Sr stood to
gain more from the deal than anyone else. He will reportedly receive 10% of the transfer fee, and has profited from every step of his son's career, from when he left Santos to when he signed a new contract with Barcelona last October.
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Last week,
reports claimed that Neymar Sr, who has been a powerful influence in his son's career, had urged PSG to delay formalising the move for Neymar until after July 31. If the player had left before that date, Barcelona would have been under no obligation to pay his father a "loyalty bonus" of €27m (£23.3m) for Neymar Sr's role in his son signing a new contract last October.
Neymar's transfer was confirmed on August 3, but it appears Barcelona won't pay his father the fee he was due to receive.
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"The club will not pay the bonus to Neymar's father," Barcelona spokesman Josep Vives told Spanish media outlet Marca.
"There were three conditions: the player must not negotiate his departure from the club during the month before the bonus became payable, he must demonstrate his desire to fulfil his contract, and that we would not pay out the bonus before September 1, to ensure the transfer window was closed. Now that we know that none of these three conditions were met, we will not honour that bonus."
We're sure Neymar Sr won't be short of money, but Barcelona will take some solace from not having to give him any more money.
