What’s in the number? If Brazil’s No.10 has any magic at all, Neymar needs it now more than ever
Neymar Jr. wears Brazil’s iconic No. 10 in 2022/ Image: Instagram @Neymarjr The debate shouldn’t even exist, and yet here we are, days before Brazil names its squad for the 2026 World Cup, with social media ablaze with news that Vinicius Jr., the Real Madrid striker who has become the most explosive attacking player on the planet, is set to inherit the most iconic shirt number in the history of the sport and that Neymar, who should be no more than 13, will make way for him. The reports have been denied and official Brazil squad numbers have yet to be assigned, but the fact that the speculation spread as quickly and as widely as it did tells you something real about where Neymar is right now at this particular moment, back in the team after nearly three years away, carrying the weight of a torn ACL and the memory of what he once was, reaching the final and the most complicated football career in Brazil. made. Before anyone decides whether to stick with the shirt or move on without it, it’s worth remembering what the number actually does to the people who wear it, and there’s no better place to start than a Tokyo tunnel in the summer of 2021.
The shirt and what it asks of you
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics, delayed by a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic and held in 2021, gave the world one of the more instructive examples of what Brazil’s number 10 jersey is capable of demanding from its wearer. Richarlison, the Tottenham Hotspur forward who was presented with the team’s jersey for the tournament, was standing in the tunnel before Brazil’s Group D opener against Germany when captain Dani Alves, a decorated full-back whose career has spanned two decades and encompassed virtually every honor the sport has to offer, turned to him with a challenge as direct as it was hinted at: “Ah, so you’re wearing number 10, huh? I want to see some goals from you.” The answer was a first-half hat-trick inside thirty minutes, a 4-2 victory over Germany in a match that served as symbolic revenge for Brazil’s disastrous 7-1 semi-final defeat on home soil at the 2014 World Cup, and the start of a run that ended with Richarlison lifting Olympic gold and finishing as the competition’s top scorer.Reflecting on what the experience meant to him, he told Olympics.com in an exclusive interview for their ‘World At Their Feet’ series: “I was really happy, I found out I was the top scorer in the final, I was the top scorer for the first time. And like I said, the number 10 shirt of Pelé, Neymar and Ronaldinho, I felt like a king because they gave me the number 10 and I finished as the top scorer, just like what people expect from a Brazilian number 10.” Three months later, at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, Richarlison opened Brazil’s account against Serbia with a scissor goal so extraordinary that it was voted Hyundai’s goal of the tournament and nominated for the FIFA Puskás Award, with Brazil winning the match 2-0 and Richarlison scoring both goals, this time the 10th expected, but with the confidence and self-belief instilled in him by Olympic experience, he visibly continued whatever he was doing. The shirt, as Richarlison’s experience made clear, has a way of finding the best version of whoever is brave enough to wear it, and the vestiges of that belief don’t simply disappear when the number changes, and the question of who that person should be aiming for in the summer of 2026 is one that Brazilian football can’t stop arguing about.
How the number became what it is
Brazil’s governing body was founded on June 8, 1914, and the national team played its first international match a month later, beginning a journey that resulted in the most decorated soccer nation in history and the most mythologized jersey number the sport has ever seen. In one of football’s great ironies, the association between Brazil and the number 10 was born out of an administrative oversight; Before the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, Brazil did not submit their official list of team numbers to FIFA, and the organization allocated the numbers at random, handing the number 10 to a seventeen-year-old from Três Corações named Edson Arantes do Nascimento, known to the world as Skin.He responded by scoring six goals in four games, including a hat-trick in the semi-final against France and two goals in the final against the host nation (Sweden), winning the first of three World Cup titles and turning an administrative mishap into the most enduring symbol of attacking excellence.After Pelé came Zico, the technically brilliant Flamengo playmaker who epitomized Brazilian football in the late 1970s and early 1980s, then Rivaldo, whose performances at the 1998 and 2002 World Cups reminded the world of what the jersey was supposed to look like, then Ronaldinho Gaúcho, the Ballon d’Or winner in South Korea, whose 2002 Ballon d’Or winner is still displayed at the World Cup. as the definitive modern expression of Brazilian football’s No. 10, and then AC Milan and Real Madrid playmaker Kaká, who won the Ballon d’Or in 2007 and wore the number with a quiet elegance that was entirely in keeping with his line.
Neymar’s decade and the years that tested him
June 21, 2013 Neymar Jr., Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior, a forward from Mogi das Cruzes in the state of São Paulo who made his name at Santos FC before signing for Barcelona, wears the number 10 for Brazil for the first time, joining a line that has been built over six decades by some of the sport’s best players. A month after that debut, he led Brazil to the Confederations Cup title, beating reigning world champions Spain 3-0 in the final, and two months later he made his European debut with Barcelona, starting a club career that took him to Paris Saint-Germain and finally back to Santos. Over the next decade, he wore the No. 10 at three FIFA World Cups: 2014, 2018 and 2022, scoring 79 goals in 128 international matches to become Brazil’s top scorer, surpassing Pelé’s previous national record of 77 goals during World Cup qualifying in 20 World Cup qualifiers and Bolivia’s second in September against Bolivia. history, contributed 59 assists to his goals. By no means was his ownership of the jersey passively inherited, it was earned during years of carrying the huge and often unreasonable expectations of the world’s most football-obsessed nation. Then, on 18 October 2023, during a World Cup qualifier against Uruguay, Neymar tore his ACL and disappeared from the international scene altogether, leaving a void that revealed how much of Brazil’s identity was built around one player. Real Madrid forward Rodrygo Goes sought and received Neymar’s personal blessing before donning the number 10 at Copa América 2024 and becoming the caretaker manager of the jersey, whose owner watched from the sidelines as Brazil fell short of expectations at the tournament and Rodrygo struggled to fill the role.
A fan poses with a poster of Brazil’s Neymar, reading in Portuguese, “Go Neymar, our hope for a sixth World Cup title,” before Brazil’s 2026 World Cup squad is announced in Rio de Janeiro, Monday, May 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
During the November 2024 qualifying window, it was Raphinha, the Barcelona winger who constructed the Ballon d’Or case this season on the back of one of the best individual campaigns European club football has seen in recent years, who wore the No. 10 in Brazil’s draws against Venezuela and Uruguay, scoring the equalizer and against the Nezuela. Raphinha has since made it clear that he has no problem with returning the shirt as he understands the hierarchy that governs such things in the Seleção dressing room.
Controversy, history and argument once again
Reports that Vinicius Jr. will inherit No.10 while Neymar moves to No.13 were rejected and the numbers remain officially unassigned at the time of writing, but the conversation they sparked has not died down and reflects something real about the tension between Brazil’s present and its future. Vinicius wore the number 10 for the first time on 17 June 2023, during Neymar’s injury absence, and the younger generation of supporters embraced the switch with an enthusiasm that suggested they were ready to go all the way, that the next chapter of the jersey was already being written by a player who had just helped Real Madrid to another Champions League title and become arguably the most dangerous striker in the world. The argument is not without force, and under ordinary circumstances it would be difficult to resist. But this is not a common circumstance and the Brazilian top ten has never operated according to common logic. On 1 May 2026, coach Carlo Ancelotti, the Italian manager who took charge of the national team after a distinguished career that included multiple Champions League titles with Real Madrid, officially named Neymar in Brazil’s 26-man squad for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, confirming his return after an absence of almost three years.Brazil’s pre-tournament camp begins on May 27 in Granja Comary, with a farewell friendly against Panama at the Maracanã on May 31, which Neymar is targeting for his return to action, assuming his recovery is delayed, before another friendly against Egypt in Cleveland on June 6 and the tournament opener against Morocco in New Jersey on June 13. Ancelotti has spoken of the importance Neymar brings to the team and Raphinha has publicly reinforced the same, the veteran’s authority in the dressing room remains intact no matter what years of injury have taken from him physically.
A picture of Neymar is shown on screen after coach Carlo Ancelotti (L) named him in Brazil’s 2026 World Cup squad in Rio de Janeiro, Monday, May 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
His case also has a historical dimension that sharpens the argument beyond mere sentiment. If Neymar wears the number 10 at this World Cup, he will join Pelé as the only Brazilian player ever to wear the number in four separate FIFA World Cup tournaments, equaling the record of the man whose accidental number allocation in 1958 started it all, and cementing his place alongside the greatest to wear it. This is no small thing, and it has nothing to do with the question of whether he deserves to wear it, because the history of the number 10 has always been about accumulating meaning, about each player adding his chapter to the story that began before them and will continue after them, and Neymar wrote his chapter longer and with greater consequences than anyone alive. If the shirt has any magic, and Richarlison’s hat-trick in thirty minutes against Germany is any indication, then Neymar, standing on the brink of what is almost certainly his last act in yellow, deserves to “feel like a king” once more.