Good boy gone bad! How Neymar turned Mbappe into a showboater

The France teenager may have been compared favourably to Ronaldo, but it is R9's successor who currently holds the greatest influence over the forward

It says a great deal about the contribution that Neymar made for Brazil at the World Cup that more attention focused on his theatrics than his skills.

The world’s most expensive player and his gold-clad team-mates crashed out at the quarter-final stage of the competition, outplayed 2-1 by Belgium in an encounter in which the €222 million man had little meaningful say.

Before that feeble exit, which left-back Marcelo compared to the 7-1 loss to Germany four years ago, Swiss outlet RTS had measured the amount of time the Brazilian had spent…