The day I met Neymar

It would be nice to sell my meeting with Neymar as all glamour, but in truth, getting closer to the will-o-the-wisp Brazilian than most defenders have managed in recent years took hard graft, nerves and bringing into play years of experience.

FC Barcelona are willing, Neymar is willing, we are eager – we've got a date. It's going to be the morning after Barcelona play AC Milan so, obviously, you pray. No injuries, no controversy, no red card – please. Pretty please.

Then, while we wait after the game for what will be an excellent exclusive Lionel Messi interview (the last one on one he gives before injury robs the football world of its most gifted exponent until next year), Neymar makes a rare appearance in the 'mixed zone', where media and players can mingle and conduct short, 'newsy' interviews.

Neymar has started well©Getty Images

There's a throng – like seagulls around a trawler, to paraphrase a great Frenchman. Neymar speaks and that's valuable, but he's a little shy, his voice is low, a million miles from his best friend at the club, Daniel Alves, who turns up in spats, a raspberry-coloured dinner jacket with black lapels, drainpipe trousers and a country-and-western string tie.

We watch and wonder: when it's our turn with him in the morning will his famously buoyant, happy-go-lucky, exuberant personality shine through more than this night?

In the morning that transpires not to be the main issue. International week is starting, so the club has room in its agenda to grant some of the backlog of interview requests the world's leading club of the last five years are inundated with. Pedro Rodríguez will chat to one branch of the media, Sergio Busquets and Gerard Piqué to two others – UEFA will be granted this phenomenal young Brazilian talent.

But there's no room at the inn. The rooms where television pieces are usually filmed are full so ours is to be done at the top of the stand at the side of Barça's main training pitch.

This isn't a win-win situation. Andy, our cameraman, needs time to calibrate the light and sound and how that will affect the 'arty' atmospheric feel he's been planning. Worse, we won't get access to set up the camera, the lights, the sound and the props until the first team finish training behind closed doors ... and then it will be a helter-skelter race to be ready for Neymar once he's showered.

But we can handle this. We can also handle the news that we are getting slightly less time than anticipated with a footballer who is still being very careful during this 'induction' period at the club. It will be a test.

Barcelona coach Gerardo Martino©Getty Images

Then comes a bad break. Coach Gerardo Martino is happy with Neymar's day-after recuperation work and he's given him an early cut. The Brazilian can head to the showers NOW, but the rest of the team must keep training. So his availability is going to be much sooner, our preparation time is now not only zero (we are asked to wait in the car park holding on to our little caravan of expensive technology), but the first team is still training.

There's a scenario where our star man turns up and we have no place to interview him, in which instance nine out of ten superstar millionaire footballers will not ask the background reasons for a TV crew not being ready; they'll just smile and wave, but the wave will be 'goodbye for now'.

I ask the vastly experienced Barcelona press managers José Manuel Lazaro and Chemi Teres to concoct a solution and in an instant a change of location is found and we are jogging there in the 28C sunlight.
We are putting the last bit of gauze over the last spotlight as we're told he's about to stroll in.

From the off he's markedly likeable. Football stars, as in all walks of life, come in many guises. Some of them have no interest in the process (fair enough) and turn up, distribute a few pat phrases and leave. Neymar commences in a way which tells us he's not one of them. None of us have ever met before (there's me, a producer, a cameraman and a photographer, plus Neymar, Chemi and two surprise guests in this small room), so he walks right up to each of us in turn, hand outstretched, so that he can formally introduce himself. Like we don't know who he is but he does know who we are! Great manners.

The rules of the game are simple. I'm known and trusted around the Spanish clubs that I've been covering for UEFA.com since 2002. So, although we'd like Neymar to feel free to answer in Portuguese, I'll offer the interview questions in Spanish – now his 'working' language.

We know that we are going to get a dangerously short amount of time before he has to go to another commitment, so everyone is on their toes; it's lights-camera-action from the moment he steps inside the door.

The UEFA TV crew have the task of balancing the tension of making sure not a millisecond of time is wasted, that everyone is on top of their game, while also projecting an atmosphere of total calm and professionalism for this world-famous guest.

The Milan game had taken its toll on him the previous night and he's not only physically 'bushed' but ready to relax mentally as well. Yet he's sensible enough to be on guard, assessing us and our work to see whether he's ready to trust and whether this might be an experience he'll choose to repeat.

There's a spell where the interviewer really has to 'work his pitch'. Every question must be phrased to ensure that the player's attention is snagged, his brain and enthusiasm engaged. You work your lexicon, you use body language, you smile encouragingly at the answer. You may even raise an eyebrow, Carlo Ancelotti-style, at a good answer. Demonstrate interest.

Neymar is close friends with Daniel Alves©Getty Images

And everything comes together. He's noticeably comfortable about the phrasing of questions about his developing partnership with Messi. Talking about Alves brings a smile to both his mouth and his now twinkling eyes. And being required to describe what it felt like to score and give the winning assist in his first Clásico all combine to mean that he's 'in the zone' and the interview will be a success. He enjoys being asked to find short, snappy phrases to sum up his Brazilian predecessors at the Camp Nou – Romário, Rivaldo, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho.

While he's preparing to do an end-of-interview piece to camera, there's the liquid-gold (for me) opportunity to whisper a few chatty comments about life in Barcelona, his excitement about the impending FIFA World Cup. These off-the-record moments are when you can succeed or fail in making a personal impact on a player you might end up working around for seven or eight years. You milk them.

Then suddenly he's shown the sharpness of his mind in that he's quick to memorise a three-sentence statement which he's given by us and which he recites while staring down the barrel of the main camera.

All homework done and he's up and nearly off. Close up, it's genuinely remarkable how slim, slight and boyish he appears. Rough tackling? It looks like a puff of wind might blow him away. But this is, already, one of the world's great footballers. The two female staff from his management company are ready to whisk Neymar away, but not before a final classy touch from him. "Goodbye ... thank you," in English, a friendly wink and he's gone. Job done.

The opinions expressed here are the writer's own and not those of UEFA.