Who are Neymar's favourite opponents?

Brazil's all-time top scorer in UEFA club competition with 41 goals, Neymar continues to score at an impressive rate for Paris, but which teams bring out the best in him?

• Neymar failed to score in his first five UEFA Champions League games for Barcelona, but the dam burst on 11 December 2013 when the Brazilian scored a hat-trick in a 6-1 group stage defeat of Celtic at the Camp Nou.

Six great Neymar goals

• That first hat-trick was scored inside 15 minutes, Neymar finding the net in the 44th, 48th and 58th minutes. He got his second – and first for Paris – against Crvena zvezda in the 2018/19 competition (20, 22, 81), and struck his third (21, 38, 50) against İstanbul Başakşehir in December 2020.

• Statistics suggest that Başakşehir, Celtic and Crvena zvezda are his favourite opponents, though it is easy to see why Paris were so keen to sign him in summer 2017; he had scored seven goals against them in six games for Barcelona.

• Neymar has found the net against 17 of the 25 sides he has met in Europe; to date, Napoli and Roma have kept him at bay for the longest: 180 minutes without conceding.

• The Brazilian's scoring rate has improved significantly since he moved to France. At Barcelona, he scored 21 goals in 40 #UCL games (3,408m of football in total), at an average rate of a goal every 162m17s. He has scored 20 in 25 European games for Paris, finding the target every 109m48s.

• His overall goals-per-minute game is not quite up to the standard of Lionel Messi (a goal every 101m44s), Cristiano Ronaldo (one every 113m45s) or Robert Lewandowski (122m43s).

Who has Neymar scored against in UEFA competition?

• Neymar has taken on sides from 12 nations in the UEFA Champions League, and to date the only country that has a collective clean sheet against the Brazilian is Cyprus – though that only amounts to 90 minutes of Barcelona's 1-0 win against APOEL in the 2014/15 group stage.

• Cyprus aside, he averages a goal a game or better against teams from Belarus, Belgium, France, Scotland, Serbia and Turkey.

• To date, he has scored only once in six games against Spanish sides, and once in ten meetings with Serie A clubs. Five goals have come in 12 meetings with Premier League sides, although Bundesliga representatives have more reason to be cautious – Neymar averages a goal every 141m26s against German teams.

Which nations' clubs has Neymar scored against?

When Neymar has scored his UEFA Champions League goals

• The message for Neymar's opponents is don't drop off if he doesn't score in the first ten minutes; 13 of his 41 goals in the UEFA Champions League have been scored between the 11th and 30th minutes of games.

Neymar celebrates Barcelona's 6-1 win against Paris©AFP/Getty Images

• The Brazilian's other big scoring hotspot is the final minutes – plus added time: six goals between the 85th minute and the final whistle (two of those in Barcelona's 6-1 comeback win against Paris from 2017).

Last updated: 06/01/21