It has emerged that Paris Saint-Germain made a big move to sign Neymar from Barcelona in the summer, only to ultimately come up short.
The former Santos man is now set to stay at the Camp Nou for the foreseeable future, having penned an extended contract with the Catalan club last Friday.
French newspaper L'Equipe reported on Tuesday that Neymar's father went as far as meeting with members of the PSG hierarchy in the summer to discuss terms of the deal.
His request for the player to make the move to the Parc des Princes was a 35 million euro annual salary and for the Ligue 1 champions to pay off his 40m euro debts.PSG did not view his salary demands as a problem but drew the line at writing off the striker's debts, who considered that request to be much too extreme.
Prior to that meeting between the club and Neymar's father, his agent Wagner Ribeiro had met with Paris Saint-Germain officials in April in Sao Paulo and again in Ibiza, with the Brazil international earmarked as the perfect replacement for Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
PSG owner Emir Tamim Al Thani's number one priority was Neymar's Barcelona teammate Lionel Messi but quickly gave up on that idea when he discovered that the Argentine had no intention of leaving the Camp Nou.
Plenty of clubs were linked with a mammoth deal for the Blaugrana star, who was said to be ready to leave Lionel Messi's shadow and become the leading man for a new club, but eventually he committed his future to the Camp Nou club.
According to Wagner Ribeiro, the player's agent, it all began with a meeting in Ibiza between PSG chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi, Neymar, and his father.Put on the table was a basic five-year contract of 50 million euros, a private jet to travel to Brazil games, as well as a share in a new chain of hotels that would bear his name - akin to Cristiano Ronaldo's latest venture.
A second meeting took place in Sao Paulo, where Les Parisiens confirmed their intention to pay Neymar's 190m euro release clause, and while the attacker considered the proposal, it was eventually rejected.
"We were talking for two hours and Neymar was excited," Ribeiro told ESPN Brasil, "Al-Khelaifi explained that tax would not be an issue and he'd be No. 1 in the team, which cannot happen at Barcelona.
"I told Neymar it was an unrealistic proposal, he'd become the highest paid player in the world.
"If Neymar stayed in Barcelona it's because he's happy there, in the club and the city. I wanted him to go to PSG but his father advised him to stay."
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