Neymar has found himself at the centre of controversy again after making public a video of a private moment shared with Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez. The footage shows the three players drunk and dancing during Barcelona’s celebrations after winning the Champions League in 2015, and it stands out because it captures Messi in a way supporters rarely, if ever, get to see.
The clip resurfaced as Neymar went through videos saved on his phone for his Netflix documentary, Neymar: The Perfect Chaos, where he revisited the moment.
Not everyone was comfortable with the material being shared. Criticism focused less on what the three players were doing and more on the decision to publish a private moment at all, particularly given that Messi is seldom linked to scandals involving parties or inappropriate behaviour. Some argued that had the footage emerged at the time it was filmed, the players would have faced heavy criticism, and that Barcelona’s reputation could also have suffered because of the state they were in during the celebration.
Others viewed the backlash as an overreaction. For those fans, the video simply showed three players marking a major achievement, and the fact that they had drunk too much was something that could happen to anyone rather than evidence of wrongdoing.