Asked at the end of the game after yesterday’s defeat of Chelsea against Real Madrid in the quarter-finals of the Champions League (0-2, 2-0 first leg), Thiago Silva shimmers the fact that this was perhaps his last match in “the most beautiful of competitions”.
The 38-year-old central has probably just played the last match of his career in the Champions League. Indeed, the calculation is simple. The Blues are in the 11h position in the Premier League, 17 points behind Newcastle, the current holder of the last ticket for the Champions League, and therefore very far from the qualifying places in the European Cups. Also, with a contract that ends in 2024 for the Brazilian, who will be 39 next year, his chances of playing in a CL in 2024 are very slim.
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The Monster (nickname he acquired during his time at Milan) therefore declared yesterday after the defeat of his family: “The frustration is there: maybe this was my last Champions League match. It’s sad to end like this…”
“We must not repeat the same mistakes next season”
The winner of the 2019 Champions League with Chelsea also took the opportunity to address a few spades to his management, especially concerning the exorbitant number of players available to the club, and which he considers not to be life-saving (Chelsea has 22 recruits this season in counting loan returns), quite the contrary.
He explains: “We have very good players now. But on the other hand, there are bound to be some who will be unhappy with their playing time. There will always be disappointed players, not everyone can play at the same time.”
Thiago Silva also indicates that to overcome this problem, the club had to “increase the size of the locker room, because it could no longer accommodate all the players in the squad.”
