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For a long time, David Silva made one media appearance a year. There were very occasional exceptions: the odd UEFA-mandated news conference before a Champions League match, or infrequent chats after games, his demeanor always polite but his eyes drifting down the corridor, toward the exit, into the wide open spaces between the lines of journalists.
Mostly, though, there was just one commitment that he always kept, in support of an annual campaign to promote tourism on the Canary Islands, where he had grown up. Silva had accepted a post as a brand ambassador for a family resort on Gran Canaria, and part of the deal was that — once a year — he had to tell people about it.
The interviews always followed roughly the same beat. Silva would be tight-lipped and diplomatic about whatever issues were roiling Manchester City at the time, and then much more forthcoming about his childhood, about playing soccer with an orange or a potato in the alleys around the harbor in Arguineguín, about his bond with and love for the island.
The problem — from a journalist’s point of view — is that you can only tell that story once (maybe twice, if you’re clever about it). And because drawing out Silva on anything else was a challenge, after a while attendance at his annual promotional appearances started to dwindle.
Naturally, this was all interpreted as evidence of David Silva’s inherent shyness. He must be a quiet sort, it was decided. Does his talking on the field. Not comfortable in the limelight. He grew up in a simple home, you know. Used to play soccer with a potato in the alleys around the harbor in Arguineguín. (See, that’s how you use it twice.)
Quite how much truth there is in that impression of Silva — the one that has accompanied him through his decade at Manchester City — is anyone’s guess. There is not really any way of knowing if Silva, in private, is quiet, or shy, or uncomfortable with the visibility that comes from fame.
That was just an interpretation, a narrative that journalists wove with the materials at hand, and one that — completely coincidentally — made us feel slightly better about not being able to coax anything controversial out of him. David Silva, it was decided, does not like to talk. But we do not know that for sure. All we do know is that David Silva does not like talking to us.
On Friday night, Silva will make what could be his final appearance on an English field. It will certainly be his last competitive appearance on English soil in Manchester City’s colors. His farewell tour starts with the second leg of City’s Champions League tie with Real Madrid. He will be hoping it closes in Lisbon, on August 23, with the first European Cup in the club’s history. It would be his last, and greatest, triumph for City.
He has already been given an emotional send-off from the Premier League, paeans of praise ringing in his ears for his contributions to four championships and countless cups, credited with being not only arguably the finest player in City’s history but as the most transformative signing of the club’s new era, the player who — more than any other — helped turn it into the pre-eminent force in English soccer in the 2010s.
The glowing testimonies to his impact, though, stretched beyond City. His name should, the consensus ran, be added to those of Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp, Eric Cantona and the rest as one of the finest imports the English game has ever seen.
When Silva arrived at City, he walked into the changing room at the club’s old training facility at Carrington, just outside Manchester, to find a picture had been placed on the wall. It was the iconic image of Nigel De Jong, his new club teammate, planting his foot into Xabi Alonso’s chest during the 2010 World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands.
Silva laughed it off as well-meaning — the easy laugh of someone who had just won the World Cup — but it hints at what has been, arguably, Silva’s greatest contribution: not the run of success he has had with City, but the incontrovertible demonstration that players of his skill set not only thrive in but can come to dominate a league still mildly obsessed with physicality and athleticism.
Silva, in that sense, has been disruptive. In almost every other sense, he has been quite the opposite. The Manchester City that he joined in 2010 still lived up to Alex Ferguson’s image of noisy neighbors: Roberto Mancini, the coach, was forever railing against someone or something, internal or external; Mario Balotelli was in his enfant terrible phase; Carlos Tevez, star of the billboard that evoked Ferguson’s ire, was staging the occasional substitutes’ bench mutiny.
At some point in all of that hullabaloo, City seemed to make a decision: For the club to become a consistent, established force, it needed to be a little less Tevez, and a lot more Silva. Anyone deemed a troublemaker was jettisoned, and serious, studious quiet became the order of the day, as later typified by the likes of Ilkay Gundogan, Aymeric Laporte and Bernardo Silva. It is hard to think of a manager less like the tempestuous Mancini than his artfully monotone successor, Manuel Pellegrini.
The benefits of that policy do not need explanation: three more Premier League titles, in 2014, 2018 and 2019, the arrival of Pep Guardiola and a slew of records and a haul of trophies.
But, in Silva’s goodbye, there was evidence to suggest that the changes had benefited him in the long run, too. He has long been aware that profile can be as important as talent; he once remarked that one of the reasons he had not made quite so many appearances for Spain as he might have liked was that he played for Manchester City, rather than Barcelona or Real Madrid.
And it is reasonable to assume he has been encouraged, at various times in his career, to put himself out there a little more, to take on more commercial work, to be a little more available to the news media. That would have been the first step to maximizing his earnings; and, besides, the occasional advertisement for a Japanese face fitness firm (no, really) or Egyptian energy concern never did Cristiano Ronaldo any harm.
That one engagement for the Canary Islands aside, Silva has done almost none of it. He has always stayed quiet. Of the four players on whom City’s modern success is built, it feels as if we know the least about Silva. Vincent Kompany had a large, and well-deserved, public profile. Sergio Agüero does considerable commercial work.
Yaya Touré, one of the pillars of those pre-Guardiola City teams, is the best example, though, and the cautionary tale. All that Touré did for the club is overshadowed in the public imagination by the frequent squabbles over his contract (led by his agent, rather than the player). Somehow, one of the most important players in the club’s history is remembered, mainly, for a silly spat over a birthday cake.
One way or another, though, fans — of City and of other teams — have an opinion of Agüero, Kompany and Touré not just as players, but as people. That public perception is not accurate, of course; it is built on fragments, at best.
Silva, even after a decade, remains essentially a mystery. His silence has been such that we have had only occasional glimpses into his personal life, and even then because of the seriousness of the situation: late in 2017, his son, Mateo, was born three months premature, and spent the first few months of his life in intensive care.
That is all we know of Silva: He grew up in the Canary Islands, and he spent many dark months worrying about his infant son. The absence of information is such that we have no choice but to do what is, now, increasingly rare: base our opinion of him on what he did on the field, and not what he was like off it.
As he said goodbye to England, then, Silva was not assessed — as Kompany was, albeit mostly positively — for his personality as much as for his ability. He was not dismissed, as Touré was, because of the behavior of an antagonistic agent.
Nobody had taken a position against him for his off-field opinions, or felt the need to dredge up a controversy, or to draw some specious conclusion based on how he walks or runs or carries himself. There was — and it is hard to think of another player, perhaps Lionel Messi aside, who is afforded this — no discussion of his personality at all.
The focus, instead, was on his ability, his unquestioned ability, as a player. And on that, there can be no debate at all. After all, Silva has spent the last 10 years letting it speak for itself.
At Chelsea, They Grow Up Fast
Barring what would rank among the most startling results in Champions League history, Chelsea’s season will draw to a close against Bayern Munich on Saturday night. The German champion holds a three-goal lead from the first leg, back in February, and it has won every game it has played since soccer’s resumption. Bayern has what can fairly be described as a reasonable chance of going through.
Still, it has been a fine debut campaign for Chelsea’s coach, Frank Lampard. Despite operating under a transfer ban, he has exceeded most expectations. Chelsea will, once again, be in the Champions League next season. It reached the final of the F.A. Cup. And it has blooded a troupe of promising young players that will form a core of its squad for years to come.
The encouragement does not end there. Chelsea has already secured the signings of Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner for next season. Kai Havertz, the brightest prospect in German soccer, may yet follow, and, in a buyers’ market, Chelsea harbors designs on Leicester City’s Ben Chilwell and West Ham’s Declan Rice, too.
Lampard will be excited at the prospect of seeing his resources swell, of course, but there should be a note of caution here. His first season was something of an exception: The transfer ban, and the club’s desire to promote youth, meant Chelsea’s sights were set a little lower than normal in 2019-20. Qualifying for next season’s Champions League could be counted as a success.
That will not apply next year. There will be no sense of a free hit, of an understandable transition, of that same youth being patiently nurtured. Given the investment in the squad, fourth place is likely to be seen — at best — as a bare minimum next season. Lampard’s immediate predecessor, Maurizio Sarri, was deemed a failure despite not only finishing in the top four, but winning a cup final.
Lampard has shown promise as a coach. The test, now, will be whether he can deliver on it quickly enough to satisfy Chelsea’s ambitions.
Correspondence
There was something of a theme to the emails from Joseph Witkowski (“Did M.L.S. shut down?”) and Graham Fox (“You didn’t once mention Major League Soccer”) in response to last week’s column on how rarity is at the heart of what makes soccer special.
They are quite right, of course, but then the column in question was less about specific leagues and more about the general principle. Mike Verbit, fortunately, is here to help. “The M.L.S. Is Back tournament is great, after a rocky start on and off the field: exciting games, played with some serious effort, and I even like the practice-field setting.” Mike also wins the award for best line of the week: “You can’t save baseball, don’t even try.”
An interesting corollary, too, from Michael Reimers, who believes that the relative rarity of goals and games — and thus the increased significance of each one — is the root cause of players’ diving. “It is not a cultural thing,” he wrote. “It is due to the reward for a penalty being so incredibly valuable.” I hadn’t thought of that before, but it makes complete sense in a sport that is defined, for good and bad, by scarcity.
August 07, 2020 at 06:33PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/sports/soccer/david-silva-manchester-city.html
We Know Little About David Silva. That’s How He Wanted It. - The New York Times
https://news.google.com/search?q=little&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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