All eyes are on Neymar, but it’s Coutinho who is leading Brazil

It was Philippe Coutinho’s birthday a few days before Brazil’s first game of this World Cup. To celebrate, his teammates gave him a cake. Or, rather, they gave him the ingredients for one.

As Coutinho lounged on the turf with a couple of others at Brazil’s training facility in Sochi, Russia, Neymar put his fingers to his lips and tiptoed up behind his teammate. He waited a moment, nodded, then proceeded, with his accomplices, to cover a helpless Coutinho in eggs, flour and water.

As Coutinho — 26 that day — reacted in mock indignation, Neymar buckled with laughter. Coutinho learned an important lesson, one that he has heeded in Russia thus far, one that may be the key to Brazil winning a sixth World Cup. From then on, Coutinho has made sure not to let Neymar out of his sight.

The friendship between Brazil’s No. 10 and No. 11 is genuine and long-standing, dating to their time representing the country’s under-16 team at a youth tournament in Barcelona, Spain.

Though both were considered prodigies at their clubs — Coutinho at Vasco da Gama, Neymar at Santos — their paths had not crossed until then. In Coutinho’s retelling, they clicked immediately, as players and as people.

“We had a lot of fun,” he has said.

Their careers soon diverged, and so, for a while, did their prospects — Coutinho toiled for recognition in Europe as Neymar, still in Brazil, blossomed into the country’s golden boy — but they have always been close.

Sufficiently so, in fact, that last summer, when Barcelona feared Neymar was about to leave for Paris St.-Germain, the club floated the possibility of signing Coutinho in the hope it would persuade him to stay. It did not work. When Neymar arrived in Paris, instead, he asked his new employer if it might like to sign his old friend, too. (That did not come off, either: Coutinho went to Barcelona, theoretically as Neymar’s replacement, in January.)

Their friendship is, however, a slightly curious match. Neymar is an incorrigible extrovert, a fashion icon and a marketing phenomenon. His is a world of private jets and lavish parties: The celebration his club threw for his birthday this year reportedly went on for three days.

He lives in Paris surrounded by his tois, as the group of half a dozen friends employed to various spurious roles in his entourage, is known. They are there to cater to his every whim; he is a Hollywood player with a Hollywood life.

Coutinho, by contrast, is a quiet, shy, reserved sort of a character. While playing at Liverpool, his most frequent social engagements were barbecues with the club’s other Latin-American players. He married his childhood sweetheart, Aine. There is no entourage, other than his family: two children and two dogs.

One, in other words, is a superstar by inclination, the other by obligation. That has been reflected, over the years, in the images they project, and in the roles they have played, initially for Brazil’s youth teams and now, on the greatest stage of all, for the senior Selecao. Neymar is front and centre; Coutinho has always existed a little in the wings.

It suits them both, you sense: Neymar revels in the spotlight. To watch him is to experience a player who does not just catch the eye, but demands it.

There is a moment, played out time and again over the course of 90 minutes, that is pure, uncut Neymar: He receives possession, with his marker by his side. He rolls the ball under his foot. He swivels his hips, and as he does so, he slows down: to a crawl, then to a standstill. And then he waits.

So much of soccer now is movement; stillness is unusual. It only lasts a beat, but it is enough, enough to make sure everyone in the stadium, everyone at home, is looking at him and at his command, at his mercy, waiting to find out what he will do. That is when Neymar is most himself: when the whole world is hanging on his next move.

Coutinho is no exception. He has previously described Neymar as the “mirror” of the player he would like to be, an inspiration and an example to be followed. For Brazil, Coutinho appears to be taking this description literally.

For as long as they were both on the field here, Coutinho seemed to exist in Neymar’s shadow. Not in terms of performance, but geography.

Coutinho was rarely, if ever, more than 10 yards from Neymar. He moved at the same speed as his friend, accelerating when Neymar sprinted, trotting when Neymar walked. He tracked him and he mirrored him and made sure he was close. It was, at times, as though the two were connected by a bungee cord. Every so often, Coutinho seemed to feel he was drifting too far away and, snap, back he would come. For 80 minutes, he never let Neymar out of his sight.

It would be easy to assume that this is because Coutinho — as the narrative around Brazil would have it — exists, like the tois, entirely in the service of Neymar, there to allow him to shine, to provide assistance on demand, to feed off his scraps. It is quite the opposite, in fact; the eye is drawn to Neymar, but that does not mean it is always looking at the right thing.

On Wednesday, in a 2-0 victory against Serbia, it was Coutinho whose wonderful, lofted pass created Brazil’s first goal, for Paulinho. It was Coutinho who set Tite’s team on the road to the last 16 and a meeting with Mexico, just as it was Coutinho who shined brightest in Brazil’s opening two games.

This is not the Brazil of 2014, when everything was about Neymar; this is a more balanced, more democratic team, one in which the burden can be shared a little more evenly, one which has, thus far in this tournament, been as much defined by Coutinho from the shadows as it has been by Neymar, in the light.

Coutinho always appears to be close to Neymar because it is Coutinho setting the tempo, Coutinho directing play, Coutinho controlling the ebb and flow of the attack.

It is Coutinho who is the reference point, the one holding the cord. He is simply making sure Neymar is where he wants him to be, so that he is best placed to finish off what Coutinho has started. It is Coutinho who does not let his friend get too far away. He keeps him where he can see him because, for all that Neymar is the icing, Coutinho is the cake.

© 2018 New York Times News Service