What a day! Feeling it for Brazil’s Neymar whose vertebra was fractured in a rough and dirty tackle by one of his opponents. What’s interesting in the following selection of tweets is how skeptical people were initially of Neymar and what was perceived as his calculated antics–all the sympathy resting with Colombia’s James Rodriguez, one of the top scorers and stars in this tournament–until–it was known that Neymar wasn’t doing the usual fake dive and award-winning performance some players are known so well for. His vertebra was actually fractured in the unnecessarily rough tackle that took him down and he is out of the rest of the tournament. Here’s hoping that Neymar’s injuries aren’t permanently disabling and that he will soon return to football. In retrospect the amount of snark unleashed at Neymar seems shameworthy. Judge for yourselves…oh plus there’s plenty on James, rapidly becoming the most beloved player of this World Cup, his distress at Colombia’s failure to advance (with the famous last words “Men cry too.”)…and last but not least the ‘giant grasshopper’ that landed on his arm just as he struck his goal.
Active Voice 