Since childhood, Neymar has been one of the most precious humans alive. We're not talking about his net worth but rather the valuation placed on his potential.
As a teenager, his Brazilian club allowed him to sign a deal that guaranteed him 40 per cent of whatever future fee he fetched on the transfer market. That concession was sold on to a grocery store chain.
While he played professionally in Brazil, Neymar's father, who is also his agent, crisscrossed Europe drumming up business. He told suitors that in order to sign the boy they would have to front him €10-million as a good faith gesture. Then they would have to pay him another €30-million. This was on top of any transfer fee.
Great clubs lined up to be fleeced.
Barcelona won the bidding war in 2013. An official with Neymar's Brazilian club later claimed the deal included several non-cash incentives, including an orgy at a London hotel.
For the past four years, Neymar has played with distinction in Spain (though he is one of Lionel Messi's many second fiddles). By most reckonings, the Brazilian is among the half-dozen best players in the world.
He's 25 now, which is youngish for a forward, but not young. He's suffered several injuries, including a fractured vertebrae. If history is our guide, he has five or six years left before he begins to decline.
Nonetheless, his market has jumped somewhat in the last while.
This week, Paris Saint-Germain, a team still bogged down in the second tier of global superclubs, will speak to Neymar's father about a move to France.
Barcelona doesn't want to sell, but as with every top-end contract, Neymar's includes a release clause tied to a dollar figure.
Traditionally, these amounts are set at ludicrous levels to scare off buyers. Neymar's stands at €222-million ($322-million). It's more than twice the highest amount ever paid for a player.
PSG is owned by an investment arm of Qatar's ruling family. Apparently, the price does not scare them.
If they can convince Neymar to agree to a salary (which would conservatively amount to something north of $300-million), the move will happen. That would make five good years of Neymar's services worth more than the Edmonton Oilers ($560-million).
We're a ways from a finished deal, and these things have a way of ending in an improved contract with the old club, but it does speak to how what someone might be is becoming a more valuable sports commodity than whatever they are.
Neymar is at least proven. Two months ago, Real Madrid agreed to purchase another Brazilian teen, Vincius Junior, for $67-million. At the time, the 17-year-old had played a total of 10 minutes at the senior professional level.
Two years ago, the Boston Red Sox paid $79-million in bonuses and taxes to sign 19-year-old Cuban prospect Yoan Moncada.
The amounts have grown so mind-boggling, it veers into an existential question: How much is potential worth?
If you're a plumber or a doctor, talent is required, but it doesn't factor into your wage structure. It would probably strike you as odd if an electrician arrived at your house to rewire the fuse box and announced that, since he is among the 10 best electricians in the country, he charges three times as much as everyone else.
The typical professional is paid for work, which has a set value. Increasingly, athletes are paid for their potential to do work, which has no theoretical limits.
The largest sports franchises in the world have begun to realize that fans no longer live entirely in the present. The team they support may be good or bad right now, but what's coming next? That's the question that energizes a fan base.
When Connor McDavid was drafted by Edmonton, the club's ticket sales jumped 131 per cent on the secondary market. The effect extended almost equally to road games. Before he'd ever played in the NHL, 18-year-old McDavid had become the key single driver of interest in the league.
Clubs only get so many chances at these bumps, which is why their price is climbing so quickly relative to the rest of the sports cost structure.
Drafts are socialistic exercises, exchanging protection from financial risk in return for agreeing to trust in luck (where would the Maple Leafs be right now if the ping pong balls had bounced another way?).
Most North American leagues have been designed to favour incumbent teams re-signing their own stars. That stabilizes the market, but it also siphons off interest. Fans of Bay Area basketball may be pleased that Steph Curry recently recommitted to the Golden State Warriors, but the reaction is nothing like the one felt a year ago when Kevin Durant signed. On the face of it, the two moves are equal – they're superstars of similar stature. But Durant was a new factor in the equation of interest, while Curry is an existing one and therefore already priced in.
In the end, winning is still the best way to please fans. But building a winner is hard work, takes a long time and often doesn't turn out.
Instead, teams can buy an artificial boost by spending gobs of money on the latest thing. The real bonus is that the investment needn't mature into a major superstar or trophies. It's the expectation that moves people.
Increasingly, the latest thing is a kid you've never heard of. The only method you have to determine his worth is his price. So the higher the price, the more valuable he seems to you.
Pile a few of these investments one on top of the other and it will look like your club is a winner, whether or not it's actually doing so. Stockpiling potential is insurance against reality.
Can Neymar turn PSG into a European powerhouse by himself? Probably not. But that's not what the club is hoping to buy. They're willing to pay for the impression that some day he might.
Cathal Kelly