SAO PAULO — Santos and Neymar secured survival in Brazil‘s Serie A on Sunday with a 3-0 win over Cruzeiro, and the 33-year-old soccer star later confirmed he will undergo surgery on his left knee.

Playing its last league match of the season, Santos, which achieved a global following with all-time great Pelé, avoided what would have been the club’s second relegation in club history. Santos was relegated in 2023 for the first time almost a year after the death of Pelé.

Neymar struggled to recover from a torn ACL in October 2023 during a World Cup qualifier against Uruguay. But he proved key for Santos in a successful fight to avoid relegation in the Brazilian championship after promotion last year.

Neymar, who returned to Santos in January, was decisive for the club where he started his professional career. In the last three rounds of the league, Neymar scored a goal against Sport Recife in a 3-0 win, netted a hat trick against Juventude on Wednesday in another 3-0 victory, and on Sunday was an effective playmaker.

Thaciano (26th and 28th minutes) and João Schmidt (60th) scored against Cruzeiro at Vila Belmiro Stadium as Santos finished 12th with 47 points.

Neymar played only 19 of the 38 rounds of the league, which started in April. He scored eight goals.

“I came for this, to try to help the best way I can. These have been tough weeks for me,” Neymar said after the game. “I thank those who were with me to lift me up. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have played these matches because of these injuries, this knee problem. I need to rest and then we will have this knee surgery.”

Neymar did not give more details about the knee injury and surgery. He still hopes to be included in Brazil’s final squad for the 2026 World Cup, though coach Carlo Ancelotti is yet to pick the former captain since he took over in May. The Italian said Neymar would be included if he was fit.

Flamengo won its ninth Brazilian league title midweek after a 1-0 home victory against Ceara. The Rio de Janeiro club also won the Copa Libertadores last month.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

MINNEAPOLIS — J.J. McCarthy‘s first season as an NFL quarterback has gone so poorly that, on Sunday, the Minnesota Vikings wanted nothing more than for him to remember what it’s like for good things to happen.

So, in front of a subdued home crowd at U.S. Bank Stadium, coach Kevin O’Connell dialed up an approach that combined a series of small wins for McCarthy into one of the biggest victories in team history.

The Vikings’ 31-0 win over the Washington Commanders was the franchise’s biggest margin of victory in a shutout since 1980. It made the Vikings the first NFL team to secure a shutout after being shut out themselves in their previous game, and it represented a reawakening for an offense that hadn’t scored a touchdown in 22 possessions entering the game.

But more than anything, O’Connell said afterward, it featured McCarthy “out there hopefully absorbing the feeling of what winning football can be for our team when our quarterback plays winning football.”

At 5-8, the Vikings’ chances to make the playoffs are slim and their top remaining priority is to get McCarthy straightened out. He missed the Vikings’ 26-0 loss in Week 13 in Seattle because of a concussion, but he entered Sunday’s game with the NFL’s third-lowest QBR (24.1) among the 50 quarterbacks who had made at least one start over that span.

O’Connell elected to receive after the Vikings won the opening coin toss, the opposite of his normal approach, because he wanted to “kind of lift the building in a lot of ways where we avoid any sort of feeling of … here we go again.”

With the Commanders largely playing back in coverage, and using a standard four-man rush, McCarthy led the Vikings on touchdown drives in each of their first two possessions. He threw accurately, completing eight of his first nine throws. And while O’Connell called nearly as many running plays (28) as dropbacks (29) over the course of the game, not including kneel downs, McCarthy still made some key throws. He finished the game with five completions on seven third or fourth-down throws.

Overall, McCarthy finished with career highs in completion percentage (69.6) and touchdown passes (3). Perhaps most importantly, it was his first NFL game without a turnover after entering the game with the highest average number of turnovers per game (1.83) in the league.

“It’s definitely reassuring,” McCarthy said. “I always knew I had that and I always knew the potential is there. But I’m looking at it right now, and there’s so many ways I could get better. I’m so far from where I want to be, so it’s just great to get the win and grow in this game.”