Neymar may be the hope of Brazilian soccer, but he didn’t receive a very warm welcome from FC Bolivar fans as Santos played in La Paz against the Bolivian champions in the first leg of the last 16 in the Copa Libertadores. Neymar failed to score and was rattled by the home fans who kept throwing objects from the stands at him, eventually hitting him.
Bolivar managed a quite surprising 2-1 win over Santos, with goals from wonder midfielder Jhasmani Campos and another own goal by Santos. Manoel Barbosa scored for the visiting side.
Most of the action in the match wasn’t about the football. Two major incidents with Bolivar fans occured. First it was Neymaor with Ganso needing police protection to be able to take out a free kick amid all the thrown objects at them by the Bolivian fans, managing not get hit.
The second and more severe incident happened with 15 minutes left to play, as Neymar was on his way to take a corner kick. This time, he was hit by one of the missiles and needed more police protection before he could re-claim his senses and carry on with the match. There’s a good chance that in a different place, this game would have been abandoned.