Neymar reveals the one 'crazy' thing Lionel Messi asked to teach him and now he's perfected it

Neymar has revealed that Lionel Messi asked him to ‘help’ him with perfecting a certain aspect of his game.

Neymar, 32, and Messi, 37, have previously been teammates at Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain having played together on 206 occasions.

Of course, the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner was always the ‘main man’ in Barcelona’s side despite the likes of Andres Iniesta, Luis Suarez and Neymar all forming part of a world-class team, which won the 2015 Champions League.

And despite the Argentinian arguably being the greatest footballer of all time, Neymar has now revealed that Messi once asked him to teach him a particular skill.

“I helped Messi take penalties!" Neymar told Podpah. "We were in training, he asked me… ‘How do you take penalties like that?’

“I was like, ‘Are you crazy? You’re Messi if I can do it, you can too’. Then I taught him, and he trained."

Messi has netted 111 spot-kicks in his career, although he has failed to score 31 times, with his most recent failure coming in the 2022 World Cup against Poland.

However, he more than made up for this when he scored a penalty during the final against France, as well as in the shoot-out which helped his country to their third World Cup crown.

Lionel Messi and Neymar in action for Barcelona back in 2017 (Credit:Getty)

And the 37-year-old has previously voiced how converting from 12 yards is “more than difficult than it seems”.

“I would like to be more effective from the penalty spot,” Messi told Radio Catalunya back in 2018.

“'But it's difficult to work on penalties. It's not the same taking them in training as it is in a game. You can have an idea in your head or something you have worked on, but it's more difficult than it seems.

“The goalkeeper has a lot to do with it, too. If they guess right, they save it. But it's obvious that I'd like to get better at taking penalties.”

Neymar said his secret to scoring penalties was to stay focused on the goalkeeper.

"In the [2022] World Cup he won, for example, he scored several penalty goals like that," Neymar added. "The only one he didn't take while looking at the goalkeeper, he missed."