Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Neymar: The Perfect Chaos’ on Netflix, a Look at One of The World’s Most Famous Footballers (2024)

He’s one of the most famous and talented footballers in the world. Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior–or as he’s simply known, Neymar–has attracted worldwide renown for his skill on the pitch with top clubs such as FC Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain, along with the Brazilian national team. He creates quite a stir off the pitch, too, with flamboyant and controversial behavior keeping him in the tabloid eye. In Neymar: The Perfect Chaos, a new three-part documentary on Netflix, the star steps in front of the camera to tell his side of the story.

NEYMAR: THE PERFECT CHAOS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s hard to look away from Neymar, and that’s the way the Brazilian soccer superstar likes it. From his beginnings on Pele’s old club Santos on to European titans Barcelona and PSG, along with a starring role on the Brazilian men’s national team in their 2016 Olympic gold-medal campaign, Neymar’s demanded the spotlight. Off the pitch, his flamboyant dress, ever-changing hairstyles and bad-boy behavior seems manufactured to keep that light on him at all times. In this three-part documentary, many of Neymar’s teammates past and present–along with the star himself–try to tell the story of why exactly he is the way he is.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Every sports figure that participates in a documentary these days hopes that the comparison is going to be Michael Jordan and The Last Dance, but stylistically this is much closer to recent semi-autobiographical works like Passion Play: Russell Westbrook or the Tom Brady-focused Man In The Arena.

Performance Worth Watching: The most compelling parts of The Perfect Chaos are interviews with Neymar’s father and manager, Neymar Sr., in as much as they shed light on the aggressive maintenance of the star’s brand that’s taken place essentially his whole career.

Memorable Dialogue: “They’re saying that in training, they’ve been told not to tackle him too hard, that he gets special privileges, he has two physiotherapists,” an off-screen pundit notes, then asking, “so, is he a diva?” “Yes!”, their counterpart laughs.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: There’s simply no argument against the fact that Neymar is one of the world’s best footballers, perhaps one of the best ever. He’s extraordinarily talented, and has done incredible things on the pitch from a strikingly young age, rising to the highest levels of the world’s favorite sport. There’s also no doubt that… well, he’s kind of a pain in the ass. A notorious flopper, an unrepentant diva, and a man known for flamboyant, boorish and controversial behavior that occasionally rises to truly bizarre levels.

Given both of these truths, any documentary about Neymar should attempt to answer one critical question: is he great because he’s difficult, or is he simply difficult because he’s great? That is, is there some greater pathos that fuels his success, something akin to Michael Jordan’s endless need to manufacture grievance in order to stoke his own competitive fires to greater heights?

Or… is he just kind of a jerk?

It’s hard to come out of Neymar: The Perfect Chaos feeling like you’ve gotten a satisfactory answer to this question. That’s not to say there’s not compelling parts to the documentary, because there certainly are. There’s footage of Neymar as a scrawny young child already showing flashes of the speed and creative brilliance that would soon make him a superstar. There are interviews with his father, Neymar Sr., explaining how important his off-the-pitch brand is–noting that at one point, he was making twenty times as much from sponsorships as he actually was directly from football. There are clips, both archival and contemporary, of Neymar’s earliest coaches realizing that the young player’s volatile combination of talent and arrogance was likely, in their words, “creating a monster”.

The parts that feel the most lacking, however, the parts that feature the star himself. On-screen interviews offer little insight, reveal nothing that we haven’t already assumed ourselves about who Neymar is off the pitch. One scene, likely intended to humanize Neymar as a loving family man, showing the star laughing and filming as he pranks his son with an unwanted gift of books at his birthday party, doesn’t humanize him at all, but rather suggests “oh, so he is just like this, huh?”

It might be asking too much to want The Perfect Chaos to shed light on Neymar’s inner life, because that doesn’t appear to be the producer’s intentions here; this isn’t a neutral work. The way everything is presented–the game film, the interviews, the framing of the story from the opening scenes–makes it clear that this is intended as hagiography, a glossy advertisem*nt for Neymar: The Brand.

Perhaps in doing so, it inadvertently does shed new light, by suggesting that the brand is all there is.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Unless you’re a hardcore fan of PSG or the Brazilian national team who can’t get enough of Neymar, The Perfect Chaos doesn’t offer much new insight into a player you’ve probably seen more than enough of already.

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and internet user who lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, two young children, and a small, loud dog.