{"id":494577,"date":"2026-02-21T11:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T11:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/494577\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T11:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T11:37:08","slug":"neymar-admits-he-may-retire-by-end-of-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/494577\/","title":{"rendered":"Neymar admits he may retire by end of 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brazil forward Neymar, who extended his contract with \u2060his childhood club Santos last month, said that he may retire by \u200cthe end of the year.<\/p>\n

The 34-year-old forward returned to \u200chis boyhood club Santos<\/a> in \u200cJanuary 2025 and played a key role in \u200ctheir survival in the Brazilian top \u200cflight, scoring five times in their last five matches.<\/p>\n

But Neymar<\/a>, who has struggled with injuries \u200cin recent seasons, remains doubtful \u2060for participation \u200cat the World Cup this year.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know \u200bwhat will happen from now on, I don’t know about next year,” \u200bhe told Brazilian online channel Caze on Friday.<\/p>\n

\"NeymarNeymar is unlikely to make the World Cup squad as he struggled with injury issues\u010cTK \/ AP \/ Jota Erre<\/p>\n

“It may be that when December \u2060comes, I’ll \u200bwant to retire. I’m living year to year now.”<\/p>\n

“This year is a very important year, not only for Santos, but also \u200cfor the Brazilian national team, as it’s a World Cup year, and for me too,” Neymar said.<\/p>\n

Neymar, who recently underwent successful knee surgery, has scored 79 goals for Brazil<\/a>, the highest by any player, but he has not featured for the national side since October 2023.<\/p>\n

Brazil \u200cmanager Carlo Ancelotti has made it \u200bclear over the past year that he \u200cwill only include players who are fully fit for the World Cup, scheduled to take place from June 11th to July 19th in Canada, \u2060Mexico, and the \u2060United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brazil forward Neymar, who extended his contract with \u2060his childhood club Santos last month, said that he may…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-494577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}