SILVA ON HIS LOVE FOR CITY
DAVID Silva has praise all three of the managers he played under at City in his final interview before leaving the club to join Real Sociedad.
The Blues legend was brought to the Etihad by Roberto Mancini, before working under both Manuel Pellegrini and Pep Guardiola.
As he prepares to leave the Blues for a new challenge, Silva told City TV Mancini was desperate to sign him.
“He used to call me quite often when I was in Valencia trying to convince me to come here and play for him,” revealed the 34-year-old. “I am really grateful because he trusted me and because of him I made one of the best choices I ever made in my life.
“I have been here for 10 magnificent years, all because of him.”
City famously won the Premier League in injury time under Mancini in 2012, but Silva revealed he preferred winning the league under Pellegrini and Guardiola – with less drama.
He explained: “It was nice [in 2012] because it was so dramatic, but it’s not the best way because it was so stressful.
“It was worth it because we won, but I like it better when you win the title earlier. You feel like you deserve it better and you can enjoy it more. We did enjoy it on that occasion, but everything was so tense.
“Manuel was a great manager and a great person too. He liked to play a very offensive type of football, controlling the ball.
“We had a very good year with him when we won the league. At the end it’s not all about the goals but the whole team effort during the season and that year the team played really well.
“Nowadays it seems that to deserve to win the league you need 100 points, but to win the league at that time it was very hard as well.
“There were lots of good teams and maybe the league was more competitive. But we played great football and we scored lots of goals, and it got even better when we won the title.”
Then, in 2016, it was announced Guardiola would replace Pellegrini, something Silva saw as a brilliant opportunity to play some of his best football during his time at City.
“Of course it was good news,” he admitted. “I already knew that Pep likes to work really hard and he loves the possession style of football and for my characteristics I thought that his arrival could be very
beneficial for me. At the end he proved that his method worked really well for us, we won lots of title and we learned how to dominate the games against big teams.
“I like to be in the middle of the field, to feel the ball closely at all times.
“This system allows me to move freely around the midfield, trying to move between the lines creating spaces for receiving the ball or trying to create chances by finding the strikers in front of me.
It was not just tactically where Silva praised Guardiola, as he issued his thanks for allowing him to take as much time away from the club as he needed in 2018 when his newborn son Mateo was in hospital in Spain.
Silva, who played 309 matches for the Blues, said: “I really appreciate what he has done for me.
“Also I thank the team and everyone because they all helped me a lot during that period.
“For me it was a very special year because after all this Mateo ended up strong and healthy and then we also won the league.
“I remember when I was going to visit him at the hospital many thoughts came to my head, but one of them was the wish of being able to bring him to the stadium so I could play for him.
“On that day I was very lucky that he could make it and I could score that nice free-kick for him on his first day at the Etihad. It was a perfect day.”