THE ONE THAT I WANT
PSG rock Thiago Silva insists his Champions League dream can come true this season
IN OCTOBER 2011, Fábio da Silva returned to Old Trafford full of gossip. The kind of delicious chitter-chatter from an international break which keeps club dressing rooms agog for days afterwards. Having played with Thiago Silva for the Seleçao against Costa Rica, the news was that the imperiously powerful centre-half had an offer to leave AC Milan for European champions Barcelona in summer 2012. He had decided to accept.
A nice little kicker was that Silva’s career began to take flight when he played for a small Rio outfit, Barcelona Esporte Clube (named after the Nou Camp mob), when he was 16.
Having lost two Champions League Finals to Barça over the previous two-and-a-half years, United’s dressing room received the news without a notable spring in their step.
More pace, power, strength and winner’s attitude: ‘Just what that lot need!’ Sir Alex Ferguson’s players thought.
But by June 2012, Silva was wearing red and blue, not blaugrana, while presented as a Paris Saint-Germain player — the Petrodollar millions having spoken.
Barcelona simply could not afford to pay Silva the same money as was suddenly on offer to go to an inferior league without smashing their wage structure — for a defender (they signed Alex Song instead).
Three seasons on, the 31-year-old has won nine trophies — three more than his peers at Barça in the same time. But not the Champions League. Not a Treble.
A combination of circumstances making Silva particularly committed to fulfilling Cristiano Ronaldo’s offhand remark in Malmö this week that: ‘PSG could win the Champions League.’
One of those circumstances is on show tonight.
Ostensibly, the PSG-Marseille rivalry is the biggest in France. In reality, it is the meeting of one team, Marseille, deep in the mire, and another, containing Silva and Co, who know, deep down, that they will be champions. Again.
Silva is aware he is heading towards his autumn years, so he has a voracious appetite for more, bigger triumphs. And the relative certainty of domestic superiority naturally makes a born winner look outwards.
PSG now have appetising back-toback home and away ties against Real Madrid in their Champions League group.
The Final this season is in the San Siro, which Silva used to grace so dominantly for Milan — some incentive. And this warrior is still dealing with the psychological scars of being suspended for the überhumiliating World Cup semi-final 7-1 mauling Brazil suffered at German hands just over a year ago. Lots of closure needed.
You would not be massively surprised if there was a bone-rattler from Silva to Toni Kroos early in the first meeting with Madrid. Right?
But, above all, he wants to conquer Europe. Silva reckons: ‘I’m 31 but I still have so much to achieve. I’m determined that when I finally leave PSG I’ll have won them the Champions League.
‘Since my very first conversation with our president (Nasser Al-Khelaïfi), that’s been our aim.
‘In fact, when I signed in 2012, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d made the right decision. I basically said: “Just take the gig and see how it goes!”
‘Now I look around and I say to myself: “What a talented bunch of guys!” Probably the best team I’ve ever played for.’
He is chary of people expressing the truth that PSG can only throw their domestic title away. No intelligent footballer is going to publicly admit such a thing this early in a season. However, Silva is quite clear about who the key rivals are — and what is PSG’s most notable advancement.
‘Barcelona are the best in Europe, then it’s Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. After that, Manchester City, Chelsea and us,’ he said.
‘We are now definitely among the best — but we must prove it. We’ve been knocked out three times at the quarter-final stage — but this season our focus is on getting to the semis. Then the Final.
‘We are stronger than last season — two good players for every position. In my opinion PSG, on paper at least, has the most highquality players in European football.’
The worst affliction of being a length ahead of the other runners and riders is that psychological rust can set in. Coasting makes you weak.
This Brazilian claims PSG are going the opposite way.
‘What I say to my team-mates is, when we work together, we are really hard to beat,’ he said.
‘Last year, we played 45 minutes of the Chelsea game with 10 men but performed brilliantly. The same thing happened against Lille (1-0) during our first league match of this season. When you achieve that kind of result, you’re in good shape.
‘We have to win our group so that the draw works in our favour. Last year we got Barcelona in the quarterfinals and we played them with six of our top guys missing. Just one would have been bad enough!
‘We need to work harder this year to ensure it doesn’t happen again.’
And, please, he says, don’t rile PSG. You would not like them when they are angry. Right Thiago?
‘There were a number of reasons why we played so well against Chelsea,’ he said. ‘They’d turfed us out the previous season, so there was a real sense of rivalry. Then, of course, Mourinho had a lot to say before the game... we were written off after the first leg at home.
‘But then Zlatan Ibrahimovic got sent off, which was completely unfair, and we said to each other: “We’re going to do this!”.
‘We were totally determined to go through. We needed to qualify for Zlatan. We were furious about that red card. We punched our weight.’
Look out Real. Look out Europe?
In my opinion, we have the most high-quality players in Europe. But we must go out and prove it