Neymar Slams Vila Belmiro Pitch After Injury in Santos Exit

Neymar left Vila Belmiro limping and livid.

Santos had just gone out of the Copa do Brasil with barely a fight – a 0-0 draw at home to Palmeiras in the quarter-final second leg, nowhere near enough to overturn a 3-0 defeat from the first leg. The tie was gone. Their star forward was hurt. And the pitch became the main target.

The Brazilian forward came off at the end of the first half with discomfort in his thigh, then unleashed his anger on social media, tearing into the state of the Vila Belmiro surface and those in charge of it.

On Instagram, he opened with cutting sarcasm: “I would like to congratulate the person responsible for the Vila Belmiro stadium pitch.”

The tone then flipped from ironic to incandescent.

“What happened yesterday was the worst pitch the club has ever seen,” he wrote. “It was full of holes because of works carried out one day before the match. Unbelievable! Alongside playing against the opponent, we were also playing against the pitch.”

The frustration did not stop there. Neymar underlined how the surface, in his view, had turned a high-stakes cup tie into a physical minefield.

“And to make matters worse, we had to make a greater effort because of its dreadful condition. No wonder 3 players were injured in the first half. Well done indeed... very poor work!”

The injury cloud over his own participation in the coming weeks only sharpened the sting of his words.

“Unfortunately, I felt discomfort in my thigh. I will undergo tests, and I hope it is not serious. We will keep our morale up and focus on what is coming,” he added, trying to pivot from rage to resolve.

Palmeiras, already comfortable on the scoreboard, did not let the off-field attack slide.

The São Paulo club fired back with a pointed, sarcastic note of their own, publicly praising the condition of their home pitch. They stressed that their surface receives daily maintenance and is kept in “perfect condition”, a clear jab at the chaos Neymar described at Vila Belmiro.

Palmeiras also highlighted that their players feel safer thanks to that standard and underlined a telling statistic: over the past five years, they say, no Brazilian top-flight club has suffered fewer injuries.

On the pitch, Palmeiras had already won the argument. Off it, they made sure Neymar’s outburst did not go unanswered.