What does Flamengo need to do to win the Brazilian Championship? See the scenario.

Generational talents Neymar , Lucas, and Oscar returned to Brazilian football surrounded by expectation. However, despite their above-average skill, the players found their own bodies to be an obstacle to maintaining a high level of performance. In 2025, they spent more than one hundred days off the field due to injuries.

Neymar plays through the pain to avoid relegation.

In the final stretch of the Brazilian Championship, when Santos most needed their number 10 to avoid relegation to Série B, Neymar, even with a serious meniscus injury that could have kept him out until the end of the year, chose to play the last three rounds.

The player was a key part of Santos’ 3-0 victory against Sport, opening the scoring. Despite this, he admitted in an interview that his current physical condition is difficult, but that he is cleared to play and that this will not jeopardize his career.

When he was diagnosed with a new injury, the striker had just returned to the pitch after spending 43 days recovering from a thigh injury and missing seven Santos matches in the Brazilian Championship.

In total, he was out of action for 126 days and missed 18 matches due to physical problems . Without Neymar, Santos has a success rate of only 27.4% in the Brasileirão, a number higher only than Sport, the bottom team in the championship. In his absence, they have nine defeats, five draws, and three victories.

The player only featured in half of Santos’ league matches, achieving a 45% success rate. Most of Neymar’s good performances were at Vila Belmiro .

In addition to impacting the Brasileirão campaign, Neymar’s absence also resulted in eliminations in the Paulistão semifinals against Corinthians and in the third phase of the Copa do Brasil against CRB, in which he only played in the second leg.

Lucas will be out for almost 200 days during the season.

Two years ago, Lucas was one of the key players in São Paulo’s unprecedented Copa do Brasil victory during his first season back at the club. However, since returning to Tricolor, the striker has been sidelined for 261 days due to injuries, 193 of those this season alone.

Having missed 37 of São Paulo‘s 64 games in 2025, Lucas Moura scored only five goals all season, two of which were against Corinthians in a 3-1 victory in the Paulista Championship group stage.

Oscar could retire at the end of 2025.

Since experiencing heart problems during routine checkups, Oscar has been sidelined and, along with his family, is considering ending his career at the end of 2025. Even before this health issue, the midfielder was already out of action due to treatment for a calf injury.

That year, he was out for 222 days due to physical problems. Absent from 43 games that season , the midfielder scored only three goals but provided eleven assists. His best match of the season was also the victory against Corinthians in the group stage of the Paulista Championship, in which he provided an assist and a goal.

In seven years at Shanghai Port in China , Oscar suffered only two injuries: a muscle tear in his thigh that kept him out for 20 days and a fractured toe, which kept him out for 43 days.