Neymar reportedly suffers new knee setback - could miss all of 2025

Reports out of Brazil indicate Neymar has sustained a fresh knee issue that could sideline him for the entire 2025 calendar year, with a return date pushed even further back. For Al Hilal, this is a brutal disruption to a project built around star power. For Brazil, it strips creativity from a generation still searching for a reliable match-winner in qualifying. From a rival lens, this was inevitable given the pattern. He has logged limited minutes for Al Hilal since arriving in 2023, and every comeback timeline keeps drifting. The mood online is grim, with retirement calls getting louder.

Brazilian media circles report that Neymar has suffered a new knee setback during his ongoing recovery phase, with early internal assessments indicating a prolonged layoff through 2025. An official medical bulletin from his club has yet to be released, but the expectation inside the player’s camp is conservative. Neymar has been rehabbing since the serious ACL and meniscus damage sustained in late 2023 while on international duty. The latest update suggests complications that drastically slow the ramp-up to full training, placing club and country plans on hold for another year.

❌🇧🇷𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚: Neymar has suffered a knee injury and is OUT for the ENTIRE 2025 and possibly even longer! — @geglobo

@ThaEuropeanLad

Impact Analysis

From a rival camp perspective, this is the moment Al Hilal’s grand plan gets exposed. They built the attack to orbit Neymar, but since his 2023 ACL and meniscus rupture he has contributed only a small sample of minutes for the Saudi club. By my notes tracking match sheets and substitution patterns, he has logged fewer than 400 competitive minutes for Al Hilal to date. That is not a small dip, it is structural absence. You cannot scaffold pressing triggers, final-third combinations, or set-piece hierarchies around someone who cannot stay on the pitch.

Brazil are hit too, but less than the headlines suggest. The Seleção have already re-centered around ball-progression by committee and direct finishing, and their non-Neymar xG contribution in qualifiers has held up when they play with two aggressive wide forwards and a midfielder arriving late into the box. The loss is mostly in chance creation under pressure and dead-ball craft. Still, rivals will sleep easily. Every time his return is penciled in, it slides. It happened at Barcelona in the late years, it was relentless at PSG, and the pattern continued in Riyadh. Quite simply, availability is a skill, and he does not have it anymore.

Commercially, Al Hilal take the biggest hit. Matchday uplift and global eyeballs follow Neymar. Without him, the marketing halo dims and the squad must justify its wage bill with system-first football, not celebrity moments. The cold math is brutal: minutes missed drive cost per minute through the roof, and this is trending in the wrong direction.

Reaction

The fan mood across social platforms is predictably ruthless. A chunk of comments have moved past sympathy and gone straight to finality: retire. Lines like “leave football before football leaves you,” “he should just stop playing,” and “it’s time to follow Hazard” cropped up repeatedly. The tone is not just disappointment, it is fatigue. People are tired of waiting, tired of trailers without the film. Even those who still admire him concede he has been “unlucky,” which in football speak is the last stop before acceptance.

There is also the legacy anxiety. Some worry this stretch corrodes his status in Brazil’s hierarchy of greats, with a few even tossing out heated comparisons to current elite wingers who are delivering every three days. The pessimists write off 2025 entirely and jump straight to the next World Cup cycle, while one commenter flatly said “no World Cup for him,” reflecting the belief that the timeline will slip yet again.

From where I sit, the conversation has shifted from if to when the farewell arrives. The romantic defense is fading. In rival circles, there is a shrug more than a cheer. The feeling is that opponents have been preparing for life without Neymar for years because he is almost never there when the bracket gets serious.

Social reactions

He should just retire

MR KEN (@KENOLUOCH1862)

Just retire already He's doing more damage to himself than he knows..... All for the love of a game that continued even after Pele and Maradona died

https://ayo🛜🇬🇧 (@big_ay06)

Dude needs to call it a day...come on.

Edudzi 🤴 (@bluephoenix_94)

Prediction

Short term, expect Al Hilal to formalize a conservative rehab window and scrub any notion of a spring return. I would not pencil him into a competitive squad role before early 2026, and even that assumes a spotless reconditioning phase with no inflammation spikes. They will reposition the attack around Aleksandar Mitrovic’s penalty-box gravity and Malcom’s direct carries, with Sergej Milinkovic-Savic driving second-phase entries. It is not as glamorous, but the metrics will improve simply by relying on players who can start 30-plus games.

Internationally, Brazil will proceed as if he is not available in 2025. The qualifying module that emphasizes width, fast tempo through midfield, and a high turnover-to-shot conversion will remain. Younger creators will soak up the set-piece load and touches in zone 14. You will hear occasional whispers of a miraculous return window, but ignore them. Every historical rehab waypoint with Neymar has been optimistic on paper and delayed in reality.

Medium term, the only pathway back is a minutes-managed role with strict thresholds: 20 to 30 minute cameos, no back-to-backs, and planned DNPs on heavy pitches. If pride collides with protocol, setbacks follow. So the likeliest scenario is a star-name rotation piece, not a weekly starter. If that is unpalatable, retirement chatter will escalate through next season. Either way, Al Hilal’s competitive model must detach from the dependency and move on.

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Conclusion

I have covered this story arc for years, from the 2019 European nights where I watched him in street clothes while the season slipped away, to the same script in Paris and now Riyadh. The pattern never lies. Greatness flashes, the body refuses, the calendar turns. If the new Brazilian reports hold, 2025 is a write-off and the return horizon drifts into the mist. Rivals will not apologize for saying that out loud. They have game plans to build and trophies to chase.

For Al Hilal, the calculation is unromantic. Minutes matter more than billboards. The team will be better when it stops waiting and starts optimizing what it actually has. For Brazil, the shirt is bigger than any name. Someone else will take the dead balls, someone else will carry the late dribble. That is how elite football works. If a farewell comes, it will come fast. If a comeback comes, it must be humble and heavily managed. Either way, the era of building around Neymar is over. The sooner everyone makes peace with that, the fewer false dawns we will have to sit through.