How Barça's relationship with Neymar and his family should ward off other clubs

Neymar Junior is known as Ney in his profession. It's how he was known in the Santos dressing room and how he's known with the Brazilian national team and at Barcelona. However, the name that marks him inside his most intimate circle is none other than 'Juninho'. It's what he's been called at home since he was born on February 5, 1992, in the Santa Casa de Misericordia hospital in Moggi das Cruzes, when his father was defending the colours of the modest União Moggi. 

And, since 2011, when Barça met with the teenage forward sporting a mohican, he's also been known as 'Juninho' to the club's directors. The almost daily contact between 2011 and 2013, when his move to Camp Nou was being arranged, created personal relationships. For that reason, when the Catalan club's director Raul Sanllehi and Andre Cury, the club's South American representative, spent time with the Barça star and his father this week, they did so in an intimate, family environment, which is unusual for the world of football. And that's Barça's big triumph. 

As has ocurred throughout the last five years, the Da Silva Santos family continue opening the doors to their home in Guarujá to the two Barça directors - who have never let them down - allowing for an identification with the club where 'Juninho' always wanted to play and where he is happy. 

Sanllehi and Cury, acting as Barça, enter all of the places close to Neymar and are greeted as one more, be that at the offices of NR Sports, on Ana Costa Avenue in Santos, where one of the player's cousins works on reception, or at the Neymar Jr. Insituto Projeto, located on Praia Grande, where his uncle, Jose Benicio (his father's brother) works as the administrative director.  

It was the intangible things which led Neymar to Barça, the same way as other intangibles have allowed the perfect chemistry to grow with Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez. And that perfect harmoney with the club, with the dressing room and with a city which allows him privacy and respect is one of the important factors of his renewal. That, and, of course, one of the largest salaries in world football, in line with the potential and the reputation of 'Juninho'. 

Neymar's father has heard the same theory as everyone: that Barça can't compete with the petrodollars on offer, as was said in 2011 and 2013 with Real Madrid, or last summer with Manchester United, too. The Blaugrana offer, combined with legal security as requested by Ney's father after the judicial problems, come attached with the pact the club made with the courts, which settled the infamous complaint made by DIS. They're all elements which should help dispel the final glimmers of doubt about 'Juninho's' future.