Quote of the day by Neymar: "Messi is a great player. Playing against him is not good, it is…"

Quote of the day by Neymar (AP photo) The toughest opponents in sport are usually the ones who make winning genuinely hard. Neymar, the Brazilian forward, summed up exactly that feeling about his former Barcelona teammate Lionel Messi. "Messi is a great player," he said. "Playing against him is not good, it is bad." The line is funny on its surface, but it captures something real that plenty of elite athletes understand, that facing extraordinary talent is frustrating precisely because it forces you to be better. Coming from someone who spent years playing alongside Messi before eventually facing him as a genuine rival, the line carries a bit more weight than a simple throwaway joke.Quote of the day by Neymar"Messi is a great player. Playing against him is not good, it is bad"Where this quote actually comes fromNeymar said this to Globo's SporTV in July 2015, while discussing Brazil's upcoming World Cup qualifying campaign. He was serving a ban from that year's Copa América at the time, meaning he would miss Brazil's opening qualifiers against Chile and Venezuela, and would only return to the side for the November match against Argentina, the exact fixture that would put him direct...