A List of All the Hip Dances Neymar's Mom's Boyfriend Can Teach Him
Or, how I realized that Neymar is old now. And so am I.
In case you haven’t noticed this, Neymar’s mother is now dating a 22-year-old model. A 22-year-old model that has a TikTok.
Tiago Ramos is, without a doubt, a very pretty human being, who also happens to be one half the age of Neymar’s mother, which means he is also six whole years younger than Neymar. And since it seems like Neymar has been the young, obnoxious talent in the international soccer scene for forever, but now, his pseudo step-father is infinitely more hip than he is. Neymar seems to be taking all this on the chin, but that’s no fun, so here is a list of cool dances the kids are doing that Tiago could probably teach him.
The Toosie Slide
The Renegade (the one by Jalaiah, not the white bread and beige version that got popular from those other girls)
The Blinding Lights Challenge, whose namesake reminds me of the floodlights that covered my high school’s soccer field, a strangely situated field in which two sides of the field were surrounded by a steep hill, where parents would park their cars at the top and honk their car horns when the home team scored. For being in the middle of rural New York, it felt like we played in a stadium. This is where I fell in love with the game. 15, 16, 17, 18, I spent more time on this field than just about anywhere else on Earth.
The Dance to Say So by Doja Cat, a song considerably different from what I generally have come to expect from Doja Cat. Then again, she’s always been an artist whose extremely willing and ready to shift and warp her music to suit current tastes. Sometimes, that’s what it takes to be a star. Neymar never became the best player in the world like we expected him to. In many ways, he never seemed able to change himself, even one little bit, into the type of player that could feasibly challenge Messi or Ronaldo. Maybe that’s why I was so surprised to discover that he’s as old as he is. Neymar first became a prospect of note when I was first really, truly falling in love with soccer. Before the oodles of money and the rape allegations, before the chilly air in Paris seemed to illuminate an aloof Neymar content to get his money and play his way, any coach or teammate be damned, Neymar was my age, just with the world at his feet. As the child of a Brazilian, I wanted to see him succeed. I wanted to see the second coming of Ronaldinho, a player who was unafraid to try absolutely anything and everything on the field. And in some ways, we got that. But we got precious little of Ronaldinho’s joy with it. A bitterness crept into Neymar’s game, somewhere along the line, a cynicism typical of aging. I know, because Neymar and I are the same age. And I didn’t realize it until I wrote this.
Savage by Megan Thee Stallion. It’s an odd thing, growing up with someone you envision will be your hero at some point in time. You watch them grow old as you grow old. You see their hopes and dreams not quite come true, just as you force yourself to settle into your own prospects as a professional adult. I thought Neymar was going to be the best player in the world. Now, he’s as much as an afterthought as he could be with his talent and contract, an outside bet at being in the Top 5 from year to year. And you watch him play with more anger than anything else, and you realize that even if those allegations were thrown out, they’re probably still true, and you confront head-on how often life isn’t gentle with you. You sit in your apartment, having lost a job a couple weeks ago, having learned your wife is now possibly losing her job, and you wonder if there was ever some decision you could have made that would have made things turn out differently. Like there is some slightly different version of yourself that doesn’t have to deal with all this, that turned out exactly the way you envisioned yourself at one point. And then you realize that there’s not. What is, is. And if we take what is in stride and try to be better, there might still be a way up and out. Or at least, that’s what helps me make it through the day. I don’t know what gets Neymar through the day. Maybe these dances will help.
Trivia is Back
How many countries have won the Men’s World Cup? How many countries have won the Women’s World Cup? Bonus points if you can name them.