Neymar has silenced the doubters: 5 more forgotten stars we’d love to see follow his lead | OneFootball

Former Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain superstar Neymar left the Saudi Pro League to return to boyhood club Santos this season, and has helped them avoid relegation.

Reportedly advised by doctors not to play due to injury, he ignored them to pull his side out of the mire, helping to produce a fairytale ending with five goals and an assist in his last four games.

If Neymar can return from a period of injury and fading stardom to silence doubters and return to prominence in an important cause, surely there are others who can follow the 33-year-old’s path.

Here, we have picked out five players we’d love to see hit the heights again after some tricky times.

Paul Pogba

Once one of the very best players in the Premier League on his day, World Cup winner Pogba has had a sensational career, scooping more than 15 trophies at various levels.

His career hit a snag when, back at Juventus for his second spell after he left Manchester United, Pogba was banned for doping, and spent 18 months on the sidelines.

There was no guarantee he’d ever play top-level football again, but he was picked up by Monaco, where he’s so far played 30 minutes this season.

Coming back to fitness after a long layoff, it would be fantastic to see the Pogba of old, shrugging off players in the midfield, spraying passes to attackers and rifling long-range efforts into the net.

Dele Alli

Dele has been on the scrap heap of professional football for a while. Personal issues and injuries have stunted what was as very promising career, of a young English talent who made the step from League One to the Premier League with ease.

Dele was involved in at least 20 goals in each of his first three seasons as a Tottenham player immediately after joining from MK Dons, won 37 caps for England and was widely regarded as one of the best talents in the country.

He slowed, though, and since 2020-21 he’s played just 47 games, for Spurs, then Everton, Besiktas and Como – he played just nine minutes for the latter and was sent off in his only game, then-AC Milan man Kyle Walker remonstrating with the referee not to dismiss him, knowing what it had taken Dele to get back to playing top-level football.

Dele’s contract with Como was mutually terminated in September and he’s been unable to find a club since. At 29, he should still have something to offer, and how wonderful it would be to see him rise like a phoenix from the ashes and finish his career with some good seasons, returning to something near the player it’s widely known he can be.

Jesse Lingard

That a 32-year-old Lingard was labelled a K-League legend by one Korean site after two seasons at Seoul speaks volumes of the status of his career.

In 2021/22, he scored twice for Manchester United, and was still in the Premier League with Nottingham Forest a year later, before switching England for Korea despite seemingly still having something left to give.

Things could have been different for Lingard had he been able to properly use the springboard he got from a 2020-21 loan with West Ham, where he scored nine goals and assisted five in a spectacular 16-game spell.

But he was then used sparingly back at United and eventually headed to Seoul. He’s leaving after two years there, having “conveyed his desire to move on to the next stage of his football career.”

That suggests he could feel he’s still got it in him to make it at a different level and that could perhaps open the door for the 32-year-old to head to a bigger league and see what he can eke out of his career.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain

A winner of the Champions League, Premier League, Club World Cup, four League Cups and an FA Cup, Oxlade-Chamberlain could not turn his nose up at the career he’s had if he decided to hang up his boots today.

But after leaving Besiktas, where the midfielder scored five goals in two seasons, he’s clearly looking to find his next opportunity.

Arsenal have welcomed him back with open arms, eight years after he left them for Liverpool. Oxlade-Chamberlain, now 32, played for their under-21s of late, as he’s been training back at his old club.

The suggestion is that he’s staying sharp as he looks to move onto the next stage of his career. There would surely be coaching opportunities should he want them, but the match fitness in one of the best academies in football suggests a view to find another club and keep playing for a while.

If that springboards Oxlade-Chamberlain to a good club for the last years of his career, all power to him.

Ivan Toney

At 29, Toney should still be somewhere near his prime, but it’s hard to recognise that when he’s off playing in Saudi Arabia. It would be a shame for a man who scored 20 Premier League goals in his last full season to spend the rest of his career in the Middle East.

With a World Cup coming, Toney not having played for England of late and speculation over his return to his homeland, there could soon be a perfect opportunity for his return with a big side to knock in some more goals and return to the Three Lions fold before he hangs up his boots in a few years.