Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior
You might think of him as the king of flopping. Most people would say he is as light as feather, and as weak as a stick. One thing they do not know is that he has the greatest pace in football history. Before I get into detail, let me explain who he is.
His full name is Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior and he is a professional soccer player for the PSG (Paris Saint-Germain) club team and the Brazilian national soccer team. He was born on February 5, 1992 in Mogi das Cruzes, São Paulo, Brazil. He makes about €36.6 million, and is married and has a kid. He is known for having the numbers 11 and 10 on his jerseys. Neymar is the most expensive Association Football transfer (€222 million) from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain in 2017.
To go back to my initial point: Even though he does a flop a lot, he has crazy pace and is really good with the ball. When defenders come to him for a one on one, no one can tell which way he is going to go. He is very fast with his feet movement, and can do three different moves in the blink of an eye. Pelé, a three time World Cup winner, says that Neymar is one of the hardest players to defend, and recent news says that people are comparing him to a super star named Mbappé.
As a young teen, Neymar won the best young player and was the only teenager who scored in the World Cup. Pelé says that Neymar is a more complete player and has a more complete understanding of soccer than Mbappé. He also says that PSG limits his full ability, and as a Brazilian superstar, Neymar should be able to embrace what he's good at: being a very dangerous stricker. Neymar likes to entertain his audience by putting on a show during soccer games. He likes to perform difficult moves that most people would not try during games out of fear of losing the ball to the opposing team.
How many goals has Neymar scored in his career? To date, Neymar has scored total 269 goals in 439 games (for clubs) since his debut with Santos in 2009. Santos was his prime time that brought so much attention to him. He shined in the eyes of the Barcelona coach, and soon transferred there. Years after, he made friends with other great legends and became part of MSN (Messi, Suarez, and Neymar), a great combo that most people saw as unstoppable. PSG saw that Neymar was rising and had become really good, so they had to get him on their team as soon as possible. This ended up as one of the biggest transfers in football history, and shocked a lot of people in the football world.
Overall, Neymar has many ups and downs, but he is known to have the best pace in football history. He is a very intelligent player, and soon will grow to become greater. People do and will have mixed opinions, but in my eyes, he is an inspiration who has accomplished a lot--from winning the Gold Medal in the Olympics, to making football history with Barcelona and PSG. Thus Neymar can be considered as one of the G.O.A.T.s in football history. From suffering a bad back injury, to placing top three in the World Cup, he is a big inspiration to all, reminding us that once you fall, get back up and fight again.
Imran Omari
The Beauty of Kobe
I find Kobe’s game to be the most beautiful and purest form of art there is. The reason Kobe’s game is so smooth is that he treated his game as a blank canvas and just began experimenting and painting until he found things that worked. Once Kobe found things that worked, he repeatedly illustrated them onto his canvas until he achieved perfection.
Kobe’s fadeaway: proof that enough practice really does make perfect. The way he does it like he’s done it one thousand times (he has). The way he does his shimmy-shake and spins around. It gives me the chills every time. In my opinion, this is Kobe’s most beautiful move. I believe it to be his most beautiful move due to its simplicity while still retaining its effectiveness.
My second favorite, and in my opinion the second most beautiful move by Kobe, is the reverse dunk/layup. This is a move that he would do a lot more when he wore the number 8 due to his reclining athleticism as he got older. The way the move worked is that he would start at about the three-point line and do a crossover move to get to the baseline. He would then run down the baseline jump up for a layup on the right side and then reverse it to the other side and finish with either a layup or dunk. This move is beautiful because of all the emotion and energy he would put into it, and the energy the crowd would give back in return. All in all, this move would always get the crowd, as well as myself, up on our feet.
Caleb Crister