Neymar: Brazil's new golden boy

Neymar da Silva Santos Junior is 21 today and, with any luck for a Wembley audience looking forward to seeing one of the world's most brilliant sportsmen, he will celebrate tomorrow with another of his dazzling party pieces. Still, though, his real coming of age, as a footballer and as the hope of a nation, must wait.

Brazil thinks its boy is glorious but does not know if he can be great. Everything about Neymar's play as a teenage phenomenon has been to drool for; the speed, the control, the technique, the touch of magic in his sleight of hips and feet. There have been moments when the idea that he is Messi with a mohawk has been joyously realised.

Yet you have to shudder at the burden that Neymar the man, not Neymar the uninhibited kid, must face in the 18 months leading up to the World Cup, which he is expected first to decorate, and then to win, on home turf for Brazil next year.

No player at Brazil 2014 will be lumbered with the expectations of the Santos striker. He is not just the thoroughly modern face of the Selecao, so omnipresent in the Cup's marketing that the only danger is of a nation wearying of discussing his latest haircut; more, he is the symbol of a nation's pride and ambition as the first real superstar of the Brazilian game to turn down the irresistible lure of the Euro to instead keep plying his trade at home.

How happy this makes Brazil, long since so wearily resigned to seeing its finest inheritors of Pele's mantle being shipped off. At the weekend came reports from Spain suggesting Neymar will definitely join Barcelona in July, yet Brazil has heard all this for a long time now. Last year, it was Real Madrid, the year before Chelsea, and still the lad just avows: "I'll be in Brazil until the World Cup. Some say you have to leave to develop but I don't agree."

This is something to love him for, his compatriots believe. There is a soft drinks advert on Brazilian TV in which Neymar loafs around on the beach in just his shorts and a mate asks: "Why haven't you gone to Europe, dude?"

It prompts Neymar to then start imagining himself trying hopelessly to pull off his samba footballing tricks while dressed like an Eskimo in a snowstorm. Snapping out of this nightmare back on the beach, he tells his mate with a smile: "Not now". Then, naturally, he returns to snake-hipped dancing with some bikini-clad beauties.

Do not laugh at this comic caricature. Santos's president, Luis Alvaro Ribeiro, whose dream is to recreate the club's celebrated Pele era, declared seriously how he could not understand why a bloke earning more $10?million a year in an increasingly buoyant Brazilian economy, one healthy enough to woo back old footballing aristos such as Ronaldinho, would need to prove himself anywhere else. "He makes a lot of money, has even bought a yacht already [apparently worth $8 million]. What else will he want? Two cars? A plane?" said Ribeiro. "It is better to stay in Brazil than to go to Europe to deal with violent players and snow."

Hence the great debate there. Should Neymar stay at home, luxuriating in the comfort zone of an inferior domestic league which adores him and act as both homebred totem and massive national marketing asset for the World Cup? Or should he brave the snow and the violence to quickly get accustomed to the quality of defending and suffocating marking which he really must experience if he is to inspire Brazil to a sixth World Cup? Those, like World Cup winners Dunga, Rivaldo and Ronaldo, who have watched him prove ineffective in two of his biggest games - the 2011 World Club final against a Leo Messi-inspired Barcelona and the Olympic gold medal match against Mexico - note how much he still has to learn against streetwise defences.

So the question remains: just how good is he? Having seen him carve up Scotland at the Emirates Stadium as a teenager in 2010, no one could be under any illusions about the fabulous quality of his gifts. Ronaldinho, back in favour under Luiz Felipe Scolari, is adamant Neymar will soon become the best of all. He is only 21 and untested at the most rarefied level. Could he turn out like his old team-mate Robinho; inconsistent, lightweight with just occasional starbursts? Pele himself has not exactly helped by declaring him already better than Messi.

He is not. Yet the good thing is Neymar understands this himself. He has at times come over as cocky, selfish and petulant but becoming a teenage dad, he says, has forced him to grow up quickly.

Whether he is mature enough to cope with the madness to come, though, is anyone's guess. Each brilliant solo tour de force on YouTube, each exquisite assist, like the one he delivered to set up the winner against Sao Paulo before jumping on the plane to England on Sunday, just enhances the idea of him being Brazil's champion.

So no wonder he fights against being seen as some sort of saviour. "The responsibility always has to be shared. One player alone will not achieve anything," he pleaded recently. "I'm going to be just another Brazilian fighting and striving to win the World Cup."

Sorry, but Neymar cannot be just another boy from Brazil. Wembley should savour him because this is the one jewel Europe cannot get its greedy hands on. Just yet.