Pele relishes football gold as Neymar steps down as Brazil’s captain
Brazil’s football great, Pele, has styled the nation’s famous first Olympic men’s football accomplishment as the “perfect ending” to the Rio Games.
Pele played an integral role in three of Brazil’s five World Cup triumphs, but the nation had never tasted Olympic glory prior to Saturday’s meeting with Germany at the Maracana.
After Neymar’s free-kick had been cancelled out by Max Meyer, a penalty shootout was required to separate the men’s finalists.
Yet it was Brazil who eventually prevailed, talisman Neymar converting the winning kick from 12 yards after Nils Petersen’s effort had been saved by Weverton.
Success for the home nation prompted a huge outpouring of joy at the Maracana, with Neymar – part of the team that lost the 2012 Olympic final to Mexico – in tears after sealing gold.
Pele duly tweeted: “I have so many memories from Maracana, and today a new one was created. What a perfect ending to the Olympic Games.
“Brazil showed excellence both on and off the field.”
Meanwhile, Neymar has announced he intends to step down as Brazil captain after guiding the country to the long-awaited Olympic gold medal at Rio 2016.
Appointed captain of the senior team by Dunga following the 2014 World Cup, Neymar also skippered the largely under-23 side at the Olympic Games on home soil.
The gold medal remained the only international honour evading Brazil, and the 24-year-old clinched it with the winning penalty in a 5-4 shootout victory over Germany.
Neymar’s spot-kick sparked scenes of euphoria inside the famous Maracana, but it did not stop the forward revealing that, he no longer wanted the armband.
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1 Comments
Thank goodness for the end this fascicle games for the load mouthed lot who cry foul at those who do all what they can compete on a ‘level playing field’. I mean those who found the substances that afforded them the opportunities to acquire the biological development to enable them compete against the professionals from the nations of loudmouths who stop at nothing to provide the facilities and finance to win at all cost. A member of team GB took to the media to thank publically, all those in the UK and probably beyond who buy a lottery ticket. According to her, ‘they could not do it without the funding’. OK, the british media should also take a lot of credit in excluding the Russian athletes caught up in the ‘state sponsored doping’. I personally fin no difference between state sponsored biochemical help on the one hand and state sponsored gambling proceeds for anyone including athletes. A very unlevelled playing field in Rio Olympics. I am inclined to expect the same for Tokyo 2020. They even tried to ban the SA woman to give their weak women even more chance on the grounds of some white man’s diagnosis in the hope of giving her chemicals the white man deem possible to reduce her strength. SA will be stupid to allow these weaklings to inflict reverse doping of a gifted athlete so the weaklings can compete with her. We all know that black people can’t swim as well as white people given the same facilities. We also know that if we remove the need to stay afloat from the swimming process, we can then swim just as well. Now, are we going to ask for those swimming events so we can compete with white swimmers? Cheating comes in all forms, chemical, biological and financial. Which is yours?
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