Neymar: The Genius, The Performer and The Ego

I didn’t plan to write about Neymar, mostly because I was focused on top-performing and up-and-coming players, while he has been struggling for many years now.

There is a general understanding that Neymar has an inflated ego and drama-queen behavior, and the recent World Cup game gave us a glimpse of it. Brazil was losing 2:0 to Norway and, under immense pressure, finally got a penalty, which Neymar scored, but he also wasted a lot of time squabbling with the goalie.

Under such time pressure for his team, he decided to make it about himself, wasting precious minutes on his dramatic stunt.

So let’s see what the root of this behavior is.

He is a Yin Metal, which already indicates the need to shine and be in the center of attention. On top of that, he has massive Yang Water Output, representing Performer Talent. People with unchecked Performer Talent tend to be drama queens; they boss their employees and teammates, and are not able to follow an authoritative person, in this case, the coach.

It took a massive coaching name, Carlo Ancelotti, to bench him because no other coach could.

Strong Performer Talents tend to make a lot of drama and are often unable to control their emotions, especially if things are not going their way.

Now, regarding his career issues, he is currently in the Snake period, which would generally be a good thing for his cold chart, but this Snake is meeting Pig, Monkey and Tiger. This is a hodgepodge of clashes, harms and general instability. All these branches are young, representing the beginning of the season, which means that his behavior can be somewhat naive and childish, lacking grounding.

Apparently, he is also struggling with his lifestyle (excessive alcohol consumption), and to be honest, that doesn’t surprise me. Such a combination of branches can make a person extremely restless and impatient, unable to calm their emotions.

This is a troubling combination: with strong Output on its own, it shouldn’t be problematic, but when combined with general branch instability and an inauspicious Luck Pillar, the person will struggle to have a steady mind.

What his chart needs is some heavy grounding through Earth, which he currently doesn’t have, so his entire chart is running restless. Performer Talent is desperate to, well, perform, which creates inner conflict that is often quite hard to resolve. We do hope that Neymar finally finds his peace, the pace, and maybe even football form, because he is still relatively young. At 34, he could still get ready for another World Cup, but we will see if he has enough mental strength to overcome this emotional instability.