Neymar scores outrageous solo goal on PSG home debut

In news which will surprise no one at all, £222m footballer Neymar is good at football.

The Brazilian scored 103 goals in 182 games for Barcelona, including a career high of 40 for club and country in the 2014/15 season, but he’s already on course to exceed that in France.

Since joining Paris Saint-Germain in a world-record deal earlier this summer, Neymar has scored three goals in two games, and his home debut against Toulouse can only be described as pisstakingly good.

After the visitors made the rookie mistake of angering their hosts by taking the lead (come on, guys, what were you thinking?), the Parisiens scored six times.

Neymar found the net twice, including this goal, which saw him somehow beat the entire Toulouse defence.

You’ve got to feel sorry for Issa Diop, the Toulouse number five. He’s just watched Neymar destroy three of his teammates, but he’s got a run-up on his opponent and the ball’s within reach.

Except it’s not. It never was. In fact, Diop might as well have never been there.

This came after PSG had already found the net five times – you could forgive Diop for spontaneously bursting into tears at this stage. You could forgive him for sprinting towards the dug-out just so he could punch it in anger.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that Toulouse won’t have to deal with PSG or Neymar again until February.

That means it will be a while before they’re subjected to something like this again.

There are two Paris Saint-Germain players in the Toulouse box (and one on the edge of it) when Neymar steps up to swing a corner in. So what does he do? He doesn’t swing it, he slices it.

Let’s not take away from Layvin Kurzawa’s obscene finish. In most cases, that would be what we’re talking about here.

However, it wouldn’t have been possible without Neymar seemingly commanding the sea of defenders to part, allowing the ball to make a beeline for the left-back’s acrobatics.

The goal was somehow both preventable and entirely inevitable. The defending side could have brought a stop to it at any time, yet they also had no way of doing anything about any single aspect of it.

If you think that makes no sense logically, you’d be right. But it’s already clear, just two games into his PSG stint, that Neymar is playing a different game to everyone else.

This season’s going to be fun.

(Main image: Rex Features)