Fans wait outside the gates at PSG’s training campus for one reason. To watch the supercars roll in. Lamborghinis. Custom Rolls-Royces. Matte-black Mercedes with tinted everything.
On Monday, one of the best midfielders in Europe pulled up in a white work van with Portuguese number plates.
The clip that broke the internet
The footage went up on TikTok and spread within hours. João Neves, 21 years old, back-to-back Champions League winner, arriving at PSG’s training ground before their Ligue 1 fixture against Monaco, behind the wheel of a Peugeot Partner.
Not a Peugeot sports car. A Peugeot Partner. The kind of van your plumber turns up in. A diesel workhorse built for carrying tools and delivering parcels, worth somewhere in the region of £7,000, with a manual gearbox and roughly 100 horsepower on a good day with the wind behind it.
And he wasn’t hiding. He stopped at the gates, wound down the window, signed autographs, posed for photos, then trundled off into the campus like a man on his way to fit a boiler.
Neves earns a reported €175,000 a week, roughly £150,000. He could buy that van every single day for a month and barely notice.
The internet had a field day
The reaction was immediate and glorious.
Fans joked that he must have a side hustle, with one commenting that Neves is a delivery driver on the quiet and calling it respect. Others clocked the Portuguese plates and decided the obvious answer was that he’d borrowed his dad’s van. “A true Portuguese, I can tell,” went one popular reply.
The comparison that came up most, though, was N’Golo Kanté. The Chelsea and France legend built a reputation for taking the bus to training, walking, or turning up on a bike, and for being so unbothered by his own wealth that it became part of his legend. Fans immediately filed Neves in the same drawer. Different country, different generation, same refusal to make a performance out of money.
Why it landed so hard
Because football has a serious flex problem, and everyone knows it.
The matchday arrivals video is now its own content genre. Clubs film it. Players dress for it. There are entire accounts dedicated to ranking footballers’ car collections, and young players buy £200,000 cars before they’ve made 20 first-team appearances because that’s what you’re apparently supposed to do. It’s become part of the job description.
So when a 21-year-old who has won the Champions League twice, who cost €60 million and earns £150,000 a week, rolls up in a van worth less than most players’ watches, it cuts straight through. Not because there’s anything wrong with a footballer buying a nice car with money he’s earned. But because there’s something quietly brilliant about one who clearly doesn’t feel the need to.
It also fits everything people already say about him. Neves has been described by those around him with two words that keep coming up: calm and humble. He’s 5ft 8, arrived in Paris as a teenager for a fee people thought was mad, and simply got on with becoming one of the best midfielders in Europe alongside compatriot Vitinha. He’s spoken about wanting to be a PE teacher if football hadn’t worked out. None of it screams look at me.
The fair twist
Now, in the interest of honesty, one detail worth knowing.
Neves has previously been spotted arriving at the same training ground in luxury BMWs and Mercedes. So the van almost certainly isn’t his daily motor, and the “humble king who only drives a £7,000 Peugeot” version of this story isn’t quite the full picture. Given the Portuguese plates, the fans joking that it’s his dad’s van might well be closer to the truth than anyone realises.
But here’s the thing. That barely dents it, and arguably makes it better.
Plenty of footballers own nice cars. Very few of them would be willing to be seen, on camera, by hundreds of fans, at their multi-billion-euro club’s training campus, driving a battered work van. Most would take the long way round rather than let that clip exist. Neves pulled up, stopped to sign autographs, and drove off without a flicker of embarrassment.
That’s the actual humility. Not what you own. Whether you care what people think you own.
The player behind the punchline
Lost in the memes is how good this kid actually is.
He arrived from Benfica in August 2024 for around €60 million, a fee plenty thought was excessive for a 19-year-old. Two years on, he’s a two-time Champions League winner, half of one of the most formidable midfield partnerships in Europe with Vitinha, and a genuine cornerstone of Luis Enrique’s side. His performance against Manchester City in January 2025, where he scored a header despite standing at 1.74m and completed 89% of his passes, was the night the doubts stopped.
PSG haven’t started this Ligue 1 season brilliantly, with just two points from their opening two games, and there’s been plenty of change in the forward line over the summer. But the spine, and Neves within it, is exactly why they’re back-to-back European champions.
He’s 21. He’s won the biggest trophy in club football twice. And he still parks a van outside training.
If you earned £150,000 a week tomorrow, could you honestly say you’d turn up to work in a van, or would the car park do your talking for you?
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