MADRID (AFP) – Brazil’s star striker Neymar cried “I can’t feel my legs” after a crunch World Cup challenge by Colombia’s Juan Zuniga, coach Luiz Felipe Scolari told Spanish sports daily Marca.
Scolari said the whole team panicked after the knee in the back tackle during Brazil’s quarter-final victory over Colombia on Friday.
Injured Brazil star Neymar departed his team’s training base in Terespolis in a helicopter on Saturday and headed home to Sao Paulo, after his World Cup ended in agony on Friday night. AFP PHOTO
Left back Marcelo was first to reach the striker, who suffered a fractured vertebrae that has ruled him out of the World Cup, after the challenge.
Marcelo knelt next to Neymar and asked how he felt, according to Scolari.
“He replied: ‘I can’t feel my legs,’” added the coach.
Marcelo shouted for the team doctor, but doctors are not allowed onto the pitch.
“Marcelo was scared and called the doctor on but the doctor couldn’t get on in the confusion. It was a big shock, the image of Neymar being stretchered off to the helicopter, in difficulty, crying,” Scolari was quoted as saying.
Team doctor Jose Luiz Runco said that Marcelo’s calls for the doctor had caused the panic after the challenge.
“We’ve lost the one player we didn’t want to lose ahead of the semi-finals and the final,” Scolari said of the “disastrous” loss.
Neymar was stretchered off in the 88th minute of the game and rushed to hospital where the fracture of the third vertebrae was confirmed.
The 22-year-old Barcelona striker has since taken a few steps but the team doctor Rodrigo Lasmar has said it will take from four to six weeks to recover.
FIFA is investigating the tackle by Zuniga who could face action. The Colombian defender has apologised but insisted he had not intended to hurt Neymar.
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The Ogun State Police Command has arrested a 21-year-old undergraduate, Tolani Ajayi, of Redeemers University along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, for allegedly killing his father, Mr. Charles Ajayi, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria.
The incident, according to the police, occurred on Tuesday, July 3, at their residence on Canaanland Street within the Redeemed Christian Church of God’s Redemption Camp.
Tolani was said to have slaughtered his father with a knife and later butchered him with a cutlass.
Tolani afterwards allegedly packed his father’s remains in a box and dragged them into the bush within the camp.
The state Police Public Relations Officer, Mr. Muyiwa Adejobi, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, said the police later recovered the remains of the 60-year-old lawyer in a bush along Canaanland Street.
He said, “The policemen who noticed the ground mark created by the box as Tolani dragged it, followed this lead which led them to the strange discovery.”
He said Tolani, a 300-level undergraduate in the Department of History and International Relations, was arrested the same day in his late father’s residence after the discovery of the corpse and police preliminary findings.
Adejobi added that the Divisional Police Officer of the Redemption Camp Police Station, Olaiya Martins, a Superintendent of Police, had led a team of detectives and some members of the community who noticed the strange attitude of the suspect while dumping the box.
He said, “They traced the ground marks made by the box to the point where the body of the SAN was dumped and thereafter traced the mark to the house of the deceased.
“When the police got to deceased’s house, the suspect was in a relaxed mood.
“When interrogated, the suspect earlier lied that his dad had gone on evangelism, but he eventually confessed to the crime when he was taken to the Redemption Camp Divisional headquarters.”
The suspect was said to have told policemen that problem arose when his late father confronted him for not responding to all the prayer points he (the deceased) was raising, adding that he (father) later slapped him.
He said he got angry and made a dash for the kitchen and picked up a knife, with which he stabbed his father, adding that he later used a cutlass on him.
It was leant that the police had recovered the knife and cutlass used in committing the alleged crime.
Adejobi told our correspondent that the Charles’ corpse had been deposited at a morgue in the Sagamu area of the state.