Neymar: The Perfect Chaos - Is he a diva, a monster, or the chaos in between?

The three-part Netflix series Neymar: The Perfect Chaos portrays the life of the Brazilian star with all its trials and tribulations. But it rarely provides an insight into why such polarizing opinions on the footballer exist.

According to the director, David Charles Rodrigues, the Paris Saint-Germain player hopes that the cameras – and the series – will also allow the public to see the true person. In an introductory shot, he says,

"You've got to start with the monster... Neymar is a monster, blah, blah, whatever... everyone criticising me, then they come to know me."

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Neymar: The Perfect Chaos - The subtle undertones of the monster within

While the series has been successful in shedding light on the life of the footballer, his polarized opinions have been a characteristic trait that has had his fans divided since his time in Sao Paulo until today.

At the beginning of the series Neymar: The Perfect Chaos, one of Neymar's managers, Rene Simoes, throws caution to the wind that if the footballer's behavior remained unchecked, it could give rise to a monster who would ruin his reputation.

The warning, it turns out, was not unfounded, but slightly misdirected as per his conduct. In rare passing glances, people fail to see who Neymar and instead pay heed to what his fame represents.

He's not only one of the finest players in the world, he's also a father, a celebrity, a 200-million-follower influencer, a small boy who never had the chance to grow up and make mistakes, and a household name in Brazill worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

And it is here that the monster can be found, the process that turned a great kid athlete into a millionaire at the age of 14, a scrawny adolescent for whom Barcelona spent US$96.6 million in 2013 and PSG paid €222 million four years later, making him the most expensive footballer in history.

His father, Neymar Sr., who controls the machine, tells in the early days in Santos,

"I was making 20 times more than him playing soccer in a year."

As a former sportsperson and soccer player, he knows what it takes to not be canceled in a short career span of 15 years. He does everything in his power even though that turns his relationship with his son bitter.

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Why did the carefully constructed image fail to last?

If the goal was to humanize the son, to demonstrate "a portion of my life nobody knows," to alleviate the jealousy that is likely at the root of much of the criticism, it fell apart in Neymar: The Perfect Chaos.

True, there are snippets of emotion that now and again reveal what lies beneath the carefully crafted image, but the dubbing of an outside narrator makes it lose the authenticity of Neymar's emotions. Yet there is something compelling about Neymar: The Perfect Chaos that makes one want to watch it.