Trouble in paradise?
Neymar has made an impressive start to life at Paris Saint Germain after making his move record transfer move from Barcelona during the summer window.
The motivation for the move was down to establishing himself as a bona fide Ballon d'Or candidate by getting out of Lionel Messi's considerable shadow at Barcelona.
And in terms of stamping his authority at PSG, a few incidents involving Edinson Cavani were quite illustrative in the match against Lyon at the weekend, including bickering over a penalty kick - one Cavani would take and miss.
What does it all represent? French football writer Philippe Auclair joined us to shed light on events.
"A lot was made of the penalty incident but it wasn't the first incident. It was just before the hour mark, there was a free kick about 25 yards out and Cavani obviously wanted to take it and Dani Alves had got the ball and passed it on to Neymar which was the first sort of altercation," said Auclair.
Photo by Christian Liewig/ABACAPRESS.COM
"Alves afterwards said, 'I wanted to shoot it myself'. Well, yeah, really? And then 20 minutes later, the big incident when Kylian Mbappe was upended in the Lyon penalty box.
"Cavani took the ball and Neymar clearly went to talk to him and basically demanding to get the ball and Cavani said 'no way, I'm the one who kicks the penalty' and he kicked it - it was a fantastic save by Lopes - but he missed it as well. It wasn't the first time it had happened this season because they had had a similar discussion in a previous game. But that time Cavani had scored."
That wasn't the end of it as Auclair explained.
"What's more serious is what happened afterwards in the dressing room between the players," he said.
"There was a very, very animated discussion between Cavani and Neymar in Spanish in which Cavani let it be known to Neymar what he thought of his attitude, that there was one penalty taker at PSG which was Cavani. Neymar didn't take kindly to it and apparently it took two of their team-mates to separate them before they came to blows. It's not very good for the image of PSG which is not the best liked club in France."
The incident when Alves took the ball for a free kick and passed it on to Neymar does signify that dressing room "power is very much in the Brazilian camp" within the squad and that the manager Unai Emery's reaction is worrying in the sense that publicly at least he said that the two star players should sort out the situation between themselves.
