On the surface of things, all is especially rosy in Paris Saint-Germain’s Qatari-backed garden at the minute.
Following the high-profile summer arrivals of Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, Unai Emery’s men have won all six of their Ligue 1 fixtures so far this campaign. Their latest, which came days after their Champions League mauling of Celtic in Glasgow, came at home to Lyon on Sunday evening.
In the end, it was two second-half Lyon own-goals which helped PSG maintain their 100% start to the new campaign. Much of the talk since the game, however, has been about the very public disagreement Neymar had with new teammate Edinson Cavani in the seconds before the Uruguayan saw his penalty kick brilliantly saved by Anthony Lopes.
Clearly, Neymar wanted the spot-kick for himself, making his feelings known to Cavani as he placed the ball on the 12-yard mark. Cavani was having none of it, and Neymar soon realised he wasn’t about to change his mind.
This had followed another disagreement involving Cavani over a free-kick. On that occasion, Dani Alves refused to hand the former Napoli striker the ball, eventually passing it to Neymar so that he could line up the set piece.
See what Dani Alves did today, fighting to take the ball from Cavani to Neymar, very soon Cavani may loose his position in the PSG team pic.twitter.com/L28oPhWmcd
— Richardo Pepe Suarez (@ricangy) September 17, 2017
A couple of days on and the fall-out continues… if only via newspaper reports.
On Monday it was claimed that Cavani was so angered by what had happened against Lyon, he’d left Parc des Princes within 20 minutes of the full-time whistle. Neymar was also said to be a bit pissed off too, reportedly taking the drastic step of unfollowing Cavani on Instagram.
A day later and reports from Spanish publication SPORT (via the Daily Mail), claim that Neymar has done far more than unfollow Cavani on a picture sharing social media platform.
According to them, the Brazilian has gone as far as demanding that his teammate is sold, communicating to the club’s chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi that it is ‘impossible’ for the pair to coexist after their disagreements.
If accurate – and we’re not saying it is – Al-Khelaifi and Emery might have a big decision on their hands in the weeks and months ahead.
