Santos scored three times in thirteen minutes in Rio, and Neymar made two of them

For 68 minutes at Sao Januario, Vasco da Gama were having the evening they needed. They had the ball and the crowd, and they were playing a Santos side that had spent most of this Brasileirao season in the relegation places. Then Gabriel Barbosa scored, and thirteen minutes later it was 3-0, and Vasco were the team in the bottom four.

Santos won 3-0 on Sunday night in Rio, which was the early hours of Monday in India, with all three goals arriving between the 68th minute and the 81st.

Vasco had 57 per cent of the ball and nothing to do with it

The possession figures flatter Vasco to an almost comic degree. They finished with 57 per cent of the ball, 408 passes to Santos’ 325, and eleven attempts on goal. Three of those were on target. Across ninety minutes they did not create a single clear chance.

Santos created three clear chances and scored from all three. Their goalkeeper Gabriel Brazao made four saves and kept a clean sheet; Leo Jardim made two at the other end and picked the ball out of his net three times. Vasco’s best moments came from corners either side of half-time — Spinelli’s header on 36 minutes was the closest — and none of it was ever really going in.

Barbosa broke it, Neymar supplied the rest

Barbosa had already missed the best chance of the first half, shooting wide from inside the box in the 14th minute. In the 68th he did not miss, taking it left-footed from 16 yards and putting it low to the goalkeeper’s right.

The other two were Neymar’s. He swung in the free kick that Willian Arao turned in from nine yards on 77 minutes, and another that Luan Peres converted from the same sort of range four minutes later. Neymar himself had five attempts, as many as anyone on the pitch, two of them on target, and none of them went in. Two were free kicks from around 30 yards. What he actually earns at Santos has been argued over all year. What he did here was put two balls into the box that other people finished.

Thiago Mendes left the hand hanging

Before any of it, in the handshake line, Thiago Mendes walked past Neymar without taking his hand. The two have not been right since a Ligue 1 match in 2020, when Mendes caught Neymar with a challenge playing for Lyon against Paris Saint-Germain and was sent off for it. Neymar came out of it with a sprained left ankle. Mendes apologised on social media, and Neymar’s father went online to say the tackle had been violent and irresponsible and that football keeps blaming the victim.

They met again in February, both back in Brazilian football, and it went worse. Neymar objected to a foul, the two argued on the pitch, Neymar went down after Mendes touched his face, and both were booked. At half-time Neymar brought up the 2020 tackle, and afterwards he told SporTV that Mendes was “an idiot” who had hurt him once at PSG already. On Sunday Mendes just kept walking.

Santos are out of the drop zone, and Vasco are in it

Santos go to 25 points from 22 matches, fourteenth, two clear of the bottom four they had been sitting in. Vasco stay on 22 from the same number of games and drop to nineteenth. Vasco have won five matches all season, Santos six. Neither is anywhere near where a club of that size expects to be in August.

The last time these two played at Santos, on 17 August 2025, Vasco won 6-0. Almost a year to the day later, in Vasco’s own stadium, Santos got three in thirteen minutes and Vasco could not manage one.

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