I’d ‘love to work with’ Pep Guardiola – Neymar

Barcelona forward Neymar says he would love to play under former Barcelona and current Bayern Munich coach Pep Guardiola.

Guardiola coached the Catalan club before Neymar’s arrival from Santos in 2013. Last month he said he will join a Premier League side at the end of the Bundesliga season with Manchester City reported to be his favoured target.

Asked if there was one manager he would particularly like to work with, Neymar told Red Bull: “Yes, there is one: Guardiola is a guy who I really admire and who I would love to work with.”

The 23-year-old said he was not sure about leaving Spain, but admitted he would like to play both back in Brazil as well as in the United States before retirement.

“It’s tough to say if I wanna play in other countries… nobody knows [about] tomorrow, but I’m very happy where I am right now, at Barcelona,” Neymar said. “I want to go back to Brazil some day and I also would like to play in the United States — those two countries are where I want to play later on my career.

“The U.S. is a place where the game is growing and attracting the interest of lots of players, who are becoming more and more popular there, so this makes me curious, it makes me interested to see it closely.”

Neymar said he thinks Brazil can win the 2018 World Cup.

“Because it is Brazil, you know… Every competition Brazil takes part in, they will be among the favourites and we will be among the favourites [in 2018],” he said. “But it’s easy to just say that Brazil can win. We have to work harder, train harder and get prepared way better than we got prepared for the last World Cup to have the chance to win.”

He added that he hopes he can help the team this summer in Rio de Janeiro.

“I believe that everything will work well in the organisation of the Olympic Games. I believe a lot in my country. They said that in the World Cup it wasn’t gonna work, but everything worked out well. I believe it will work well in the Olympics also and I expect to be able to represent my country really well and bring the expected gold medal that we never won in football.”