Without too much hurry, Neymar Jr arrived yesterday at eleven in the morning at the Audiencia de Barcelona. It had been an hour and a half since he had started the second day of the trial for his litigation with the DIS fund for alleged corruption in his signing for Barcelona. Before, the president of Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez, had declared by videoconference, as a witness, since he wanted to sign the Brazilian soccer player twice. He did not achieve it neither in 2011 nor in 2013, when he signed definitively for Barça. "Neymar wanted to go to Barcelona and that's why he went to Barcelona," said the white club's top president in his barely ten minutes of appearance, in which he chose to give a cape to the exculpatory thesis. He did not give many details. In part, because "everything was handled by the sports management", and partly because he did not "remember" it specifically. "He was aware of everything, but he did not negotiate directly," said Florentino.
Because he was not aware, the leader was not even aware of a meeting in his own office in Madrid with Delcir Sonda, co-owner of DIS, a company that had 40 percent of Neymar's federal rights after paying 2 million euros to Santos. The only thing that the president of Real Madrid admitted is that he made a 45 million offer to Santos in 2011 to buy the player, but that they could not close the operation "because Neymar wanted to go to Barcelona".
Minutes earlier, the former football director of FC Barcelona, Raúl Sanllehí, had acknowledged having reached an agreement with Santos for Neymar for 45 million plus 10 in variables in the summer of 2011. "We shook hands on a Friday, but on Monday They called us to tell us that Madrid had offered five million more. We couldn't accept that, because we had already closed the deal", explained Sanllehí.
From there, Barça decided to negotiate directly with the player's father and representative, Neymar da Silva. In November 2011, both parties signed an agreement to incorporate Neymar in 2014 with a penalty clause for breach of contract of 40 million euros.
In 2013, Barcelona agreed to advance the signing of Neymar by a year and the clause increased to 100 million, which made it unfeasible for Madrid to undertake the signing again. Regarding the second Real Madrid offer made in 2013, Florentino Pérez insisted with his “I don't know”.
However, the former Barcelona scout in Brazil, André Cury, denied the Madrid president. According to Cury, Real Madrid offered some 160 million euros in July 2013, an amount that according to him included the transfer, Neymar's salary, the commission for the player's father and the 40 million fine that they had to pay Barça to break the agreement reached in 2011.
"I let you rest because you were in Paris yesterday," was Judge Del Amo's farewell to Florentino Pérez. And he took the opportunity to justify why Neymar went from declaring on Friday to doing so on Tuesday with the aim that he could return to Paris. "It is not a favor treatment, it was treating him with dignity," argued the judge. "Thank you for understanding," Neymar told him. In his six-minute statement, the footballer defended that he did not participate in the negotiations of his contract with Santos, that he signed what his father told him and that if he signed for Barça it is because he was his "childhood dream".
More extensive was the statement of his father Neymar da Silva, who exonerated his son and added that he always thought he was acting within the law when negotiating with Barça. In the specific dispute with DIS, Neymar's father assured that they did not inform the investment fund of his agreement with Barça "because it was the responsibility of Santos." Much more concise was the statement of his mother, Nadine Gonçalves. She responded with a “no” if she had intervened in the negotiations. That was it. The family returned to Paris in the afternoon. It won't come back anymore. Its members will be connected on the last day via videoconference in case they wish to make use of the last speaking time.
