Sao Paulo, Brazil (AFP) – Neymar announced Thursday he was returning to Brazilian club Santos, where he started his career, after ending his injury-plagued spell with Saudi Arabia’s Al Hilal.

“I will sign a contract with Santos Futebol Clube,” Neymar wrote on social media in a post accompanied by images of his past with the Sao Paulo-based team, where football icon Pele spent most of his career.

“My feelings for the club and fans have never changed.”

Santos’ X account replied to Neymar’s post, saying: “Your home awaits you. Your people await you.”

Neymar will be presented to fans in a ceremony at the club’s Estadio Urbano Caldeira, featuring concerts by several local music stars, on Friday.

The 32-year-old former Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain forward played just seven times for Al Hilal despite a reported salary of around $104 million a year.

Neymar, Brazil’s all-time top scorer, joined Al Hilal in August 2023, following fellow superstars Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema to the Gulf.

But two months after his arrival in Riyadh, he ruptured a cruciate ligament in his left knee while playing for Brazil in a 2026 World Cup qualifier, which kept him on the sidelines for a year.

He then suffered a series of hamstring and knee injuries as he tried to return to action.

The club’s coach Jorge Jesus said recently: “He can no longer play at the level we are used to. Things have become difficult for him, unfortunately.”

Neymar’s return to Brazil is likely the last chance of his faltering career.

Neymar has scored 79 goals in 128 matches for his country.

Neymar had been courted by MLS teams in the United States but has chosen to return home with the goal of earning selection for the Brazil squad for the 2026 World Cup in Mexico, the United States and Canada.

“Now I need to play again,” said Neymar. “And only a club like Santos can provide the love I need to prepare for the coming challenges of the next years.”

He faces a huge challenge at Santos, who only returned to the elite division in 2024 after a year in the second tier.

Neymar will face a busy schedule punctuated by long flights across Brazil, with the Sao Paulo State tournament, the Brazilian Cup and the national championship which begins at the end of March on the program.

The presence of such a big name will attract huge interest from Santos fans, but Neymar’s best days are almost certainly behind him.

– Pele’s heir –

At the start of his career he was cast as the heir to Pele.

After scoring 136 goals in 225 appearances for Santos, he joined Barcelona in 2013, becoming the young star of a team that also featured Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, which swept to the Champions League title in 2015 by beating Juventus 3-1 in the final in Berlin.

In 2014 his participation in the World Cup in Brazil was cut short by injury in the quarter-finals and Brazil crashed out after a humiliating 7-1 defeat by Germany in the semi-finals.

Neymar gained some redemption in 2016 when he scored the winning penalty in a shootout as Brazil won the men’s football gold medal at the Rio Olympics.

In 2017, Qatar-owned Paris Saint-Germain prised him away from Barcelona with what is still a world-record transfer fee of 220 million euros ($230 million).

He won five Ligue 1 titles and he and prolific French forward Kylian Mbappe led PSG to the final of the Champions League in the Covid-blighted 2019-2020 season, but they lost to Bayern Munich.

PSG reunited Neymar with Messi in the French capital, but the trio with Mbappe failed to gel as personal rivalries got in the way and he was pushed to the exit, and to Saudi Arabia, by the Parisian management in 2023.