In the 2020 summer transfer window, Chelsea laid their intentions bare. A fourth-place Premier League finish, FA Cup final defeat and Champions League last-16 exit did not represent a disastrous first season for Frank Lampard as manager, but it was not enough. The gap to champions Liverpool was a chasmic 33 points, and to bridge it, the Blues owner Roman Abramovich was willing to spend big.
In came over £200m worth of Europe’s footballing cream; the boundless potential of Kai Havertz, rocket speed of Timo Werner, artistic majesty of Hakim Ziyech, left-sided thrust of Ben Chilwell, and the steady security of Edouard Mendy.
In the middle of such an ostentatious splurge, a 36-year-old centre-back arriving for free was understandably greeted with little more than a shrug. Chelsea certainly needed to plug a leaky defence. But Thiago Silva? Doubts were raised about his ability to adapt quickly enough and, given his age, his physical suitability for the Premier League.
As much as his age or level of ability though, those doubts likely reflected an unfortunate element of Silva’s reputation: of not being able to produce on the biggest stages, on the occasions when the world has been watching his every move.
At the 2014 World Cup, he was reduced to a blubbering wreck during the shootout that decided Brazil’s round-of-16 game. And in the quarter-final he earned a daft yellow card that saw him miss the 7-1 humiliation at the hands of Germany. At Russia 2018, Brazil’s defence was exposed by Belgium and Silva’s team crashed out again.
For PSG, too, there were high-profile disappointments. Chief among them were the 5-1 aggregate defeat to Barcelona in the 2015 Champions league last-eight and the 6-1 Remontada second-leg collapse to the same opponent in the same round two years later.
Any doubts that fans or pundits harboured were only exacerbated by Silva’s first Premier League game, a bizarre 3-3 draw with West Brom in which he made an excruciatingly basic error to allow the Baggies’ a second goal 25 minutes in.
Yet despite those conspicuous lapses, Silva is made of stern stuff, which he has demonstrated in recent weeks. Since West Brom, Silva has started seven times for his club. Chelsea have conceded just twice in those 650 minutes of football. He is known as O Monstro in his homeland for his exceptional physique, but his mind is just as tough.
In an early experience of European football, long before he established himself at AC Milan, he was loaned from Porto to Dynamo Moscow, where he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He spent six months in hospital and took a year to get back to playing. The bacteria ate a hole in his lung and at his weakest Silva was not far from death’s door, but he was nursed back to health. “I transformed pessimism into challenge, and desperation into determination,” he said later.
And that desire to overcome the odds persists. In 2019, he led Brazil to a major title, lifting the Copa America in the Maracanã after arguably being the best player at the tournament. And in 2020, he finally helped PSG to the Champions League final, even if they could not defeat a breath-taking Bayern Munich side in Lisbon.
L’Equipe journalist Antoine Bourlon tells i that, “Many people in France think that he’s not a top captain to lead a team… [but] I think he is the best in the world to read the game and he has this thing that’s not very common: playing as a scientist. He has all the qualities of a modern defender.”
Bourlon says that questions are now being raised about the wisdom of letting Silva leave for nothing. “He is for sure a legend,” Bourlon continues. “PSG don’t have a big culture of centre-backs, but Thiago is the best of all time in this club, 100 per cent.”
In Brazil, too, the opinion of him remains largely positive, despite those World Cup frustrations. Júnior, the Seleção’s brilliant Spain ‘82 full-back, recently called Silva “one of the greatest centre-backs in history”. And when in June Richarlison was asked whether Virgil van Dijk was the toughest opponent he has faced, he replied that Silva is the superior defender.
Rather than his ability to cope with the emotion of the big occasion, it is his consistency in the long slog of a season or the marathon battle of South American World Cup qualifying that marks Silva out as a centre-half of real fibre.
“His influence is huge,” Lampard said of his new defender earlier this month. “His professionalism has been very clear… Players look up to him and how he goes about his daily business and how he performs.”
In a press conference during the most recent international break, Silva said that his adaptation to life in west London is “a source of great pride.”
“At 36”, he continued, “players are normally leaving the Premier League for easier championships. I, at the same point, looked for this challenge because I believe in my work. I fell into a team that opened its arms for me. My biggest fear is disappointing people.”
He needn’t worry. If you were to pick any of Chelsea’s summer signings to point now as the reason that, depending on other results, a win over Tottenham on Sunday afternoon could take them top of the league, then that man would more than likely be their 36-year-old centre-back.
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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/36aMMdc
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