The genius of David Silva

Who decided that David Silva deserves a statue outside Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium?

Not Paul Ince or the Twitter police (good band name), or anyone else who looks from afar and decides that Silva can’t be good enough for that sort of honour, probably because he didn’t “add goals to his game” or some other quality associated with midfielders from a bygone era.

Has any club ever erected a statue for a player’s services to their rivals? City aren’t putting it up outside Old Trafford or Anfield. They’re putting it up outside the Etihad Stadium because of what he means to Manchester City.

Take this from Joleon Lescott. The former City defender talks in a blur about Silva, quickly summing up the two elements that have made him so beloved at the club — his character and his ability.

“When he came, he didn’t speak a word of English, not a word,” Lescott tells The Athletic. “But we went on a few nights out and he came to everything. Literally, everything. On his own, he came, didn’t really speak but just absorbed it all. Fast forward a year and he’s come back (from pre-season) and he’s fluent.

“He’s been fluent in understanding English since the second season after he joined Man City, and it wasn’t that he just understood English, he understood the banter. You would just see him laugh. He wouldn’t speak but then somebody would say something, we were potentially having a drink and it was loud, and you’d see him laughing and you think, ‘You know what’s going on, you know the jokes and stuff’. He just got it.

“He tried to fit in. Not that he had to try, we would’ve accepted him anyway. On the pitch, he came and it was like… I’ve not seen a touch like that. I’ve never… he injured me, and he had the ball. I went to close him down and he did what he does when he drops his shoulder and turns, he’s so smooth. I tried to do it, not at the same pace but the same motion he was doing, and I crumbled, I just fell down. My ankle and my knee. ‘That’s not going to work’. I had to come off.

“You don’t appreciate it until you actually try to get near him. Steven Gerrard said to me one time, he turned him like that and he did it so smoothly that he nearly ended up in the Kop, and that’s Steven Gerrard.”

Maybe that’s the problem with Silva and his reputation. Maybe it’s a case of, “If you know, you know”. But how many of us do know? How many of us have played against Silva, how many of us know what it takes at that level?

Riyad Mahrez was asked earlier this season what skill he would take from his team-mates, and he chose Silva’s ability in the small spaces. “If I could take something, it would be this from David. He sees things before they happen, he’s the best at this.”

That is the one area Pep Guardiola also always goes back to. “In small spaces, in the pockets, I never saw a player like him,” he said.

“You might only know if you’ve played against him,” Lescott says. “You might look on TV and think, ‘That’s nice, that’s good’, but until you actually physically feel or try to get near him…

“You can’t explain it. Because if you could, everybody would just counteract it and get near him, but you just won’t get near him. An example was James Morrison at West Brom, a really good footballer and he could read the game really well, and he used to set traps in midfield.

“He would stand in a position where the opposition midfield would play to the strike. He would read the pass, intercept it and be off on the counter. When I was at West Brom with him, we played City and I said to James, ‘You can’t do that against David, the pass will get there. It’ll get where it’s meant to go’. He tried to do it and he said to me at half-time, ‘Yeah, that’s not normal, that’s not normal’. David’s eye for a pass is different.”

His quality and his legacy beg the question: how did City, the City of 2010, get him in the first place?

Real Madrid had a deal in place. Florentino Perez had made a personal approach after a game at the Santiago Bernabeu against Valencia, asking Silva for an autograph for his nephews and telling a club staffer to keep hold of his suitcase — after all, the Real president said, he’d be coming back for good next season.

“He was on a list but we never thought he was obtainable,” says Brian Marwood, who worked with former CEO Garry Cook to bring players to City in the early years under the ownership of Sheikh Mansour. “It’s amazing how these things work out.

“We were looking at Yoann Gourcuff, that was the player that manager Roberto Mancini wanted. We talked to his people but he was at a place in his career where he looked at the Manchester City project and thought, ‘Hmm I’m not sure’. It was the early days and I don’t think he got a good feeling about what this could look like.

“And then I found out that actually Silva could be available.”

Cook takes up the story: “Valencia were in financial difficulty. They had told us we could have David Silva and David Villa for €80 million. We told them we didn’t want David Villa but we did want David Silva.

“David Silva’s agent was a really lovely guy, a good family man, and they were lovely people.

“Yaya Toure, meanwhile… a Russian agent, an interesting character. We got on quite well in the end, but the difficulty and challenge of getting Yaya were beyond belief. You think you’ve got a deal, you’re about to shake hands and then something else pops up. ‘Pay me enough money and you can have what you like’.

“And then on the other side, there was an element of David being very naive, in a nice way. David was like, ‘I’m not sure if my mum is going to like it’.”

City closed negotiations in South Africa during the World Cup. Think of how different the footballing landscape was when Andres Iniesta’s winning goal hit the net. City had finished fifth and Carlos Tevez was their leading scorer, so they were hardly slumming it, but they could only dream of their first trophy for 35 years, at a time when Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United had shared the previous 15 league titles. City had yet to qualify for the Champions League, let alone think about winning it.

“Going and sitting down with Gareth Barry, Yaya Toure, David Silva, Sergio Aguero, I couldn’t go in and talk to them about, ‘Look at our trophy cabinet, it’s full of Champions League and league titles’. It just wasn’t happening,” says Marwood.

“I always hold that group in great esteem because it was easy for them to go elsewhere. The hardest decision was to come here. We showed the players our determination that we were going to be successful, that we wanted to be successful. And fortunately, these players really bought into it.”

Guardiola was one of many who felt back then that the diminutive Spaniard would struggle with the physical nature of the Premier League, and after a difficult first season few would have expected him to make such an impact over such a period of time.

“When he came to the Premier League, everybody in Spain thought, ‘Is he going to be able to put up with the rhythm in the Premier League, which is more aggressive, which has more contact?’” says Domenec Torrent, Guardiola’s former assistant. “But look at what he’s done in 10 years there.

“He showed it at Eibar in the second division and then at Celta Vigo, teams who had to fight to avoid relegation. He got used to it there. That’s where David showed the special character that he has.

“He’s a tough player, mentally and physically, the type that you get from Gran Canaria. On top of that, he’s a fighter. He’s complete.

“He’s a perfect player for a coach. He never gives you any problems, he trains well, he’s a good team-mate and he’s very competitive. He doesn’t like to lose at all, even in training. David has everything.”

“I was nervous,” Lescott admits. “I’m thinking, ‘You’re going to play left wing so how is this going to work?’ But then he scored the goal against Blackpool and then it was over, that was it. He never looked back.”

A wonderful solo effort 👏

David Silva’s first-ever #PL goal is today’s #GoalOfTheDay pic.twitter.com/kZiXMiNCc2

— Premier League (@premierleague) July 22, 2019

Silva said it was a goal “that gave me confidence in my style of play. After that, I took off. It’s my favourite goal ever in the Premier League because it was so important for me”.

That adaptation was helped by a determination to fit in. As well as getting involved on the nights out at restaurants and bowling alleys, Silva tried to get to grips with English life. His brother, Nando, who has been at his side for the past decade, studied English for three months in Birmingham, where a friend of their cousin was living. His dad also stayed with him and they regularly flew in friends from Valencia and Gran Canaria.

City liked their players to live in the Manchester suburbs in the early years, and although he eventually moved to the city centre, his time in the north west was always very low key and relaxed: he passed a lot of time by having coffee and playing “la pocha”, a Spanish card game, with friends.

He has never courted the limelight and very rarely did interviews, hiding his ability to speak English for years to try to get out of them. According to the Times, when he was advised to do more media work to raise his profile, he replied: “If they want to know about me, they can come to the games.”

Clearly watching his games has not been enough. Perhaps if Silva scored more goals, there would be fewer complaints about his statue. Most of Silva’s best work is so much more subtle than that, a way of dictating the tempo of matches that is especially alien to a UK audience.

Much of it comes down to “la pausa”, the Spanish term for a pass delayed and then played at the precise moment. It is a cherished quality in Spain and Latin America and helps to actually put into words that ability to run games, which is a phrase that is often used but rarely explained.

It is explained in greater detail here but the basic idea is that players such as Silva, Iniesta, Xavi and Toni Kroos keep the ball circulating by not only playing the ball at the right time (“la pausa”) but keep it moving quickly, making the opposition chase their tails so that even if the ball is lost, the guy who wins it is out of position or even off-balance. Doing so helps the counter-pressing process and keeps their team in charge of the game.

That’s why one of City’s biggest issues over the past decade has been that they just do not look the same when Silva didn’t play.

It appeared Guardiola had found a cure to that, but Silva was always a crucial part of the Catalan’s set-up (the perfect balance to Kevin De Bruyne’s dribbles and searching through balls is Silva’s pausa) and the season just gone was characterised, in part, by his reduced role in the team and the attempts to replace him.

Perhaps his impact will be easier to quantify next season, when he’s not there at all.

“David does almost everything well,” Torrent says. “When you have problems, for example, if the opponents press you and you want to keep the ball, if you have any doubts you play David, and David will solve the problem. He holds on to the ball, he knows when you have to play fast or with pausa. He’s a perfect player for that.

“He is like Xavi in terms of keeping the ball — the pausa when you need it — and then he has the dribbling of Iniesta, but as well as that he can score 10 or 12 goals a season, which is a lot for a No 8. He can play as a No 10, he can play as a winger coming inside… he’s very versatile.”

If Blackpool is his most famous goal, then “the 6-1” was his most famous assist, the self-teed-up volley through to Edin Dzeko to complete City’s rout of Manchester United. It was such a pivotal game in the 2011-12 season — and in English football history — and ultimately delivered the title. And don’t forget that his corners late that season were headed in by Vincent Kompany, to beat United at the Etihad, and Dzeko, on the final day against Queens Park Rangers.

His fingerprints are all over the club’s success in this modern era — he’s started every single cup final they have appeared in since 2010 — but he’s not really a “moments” player. His influence stretches beyond the cold, hard numbers of goals and assists.

“I spoke to Joe Hart about him recently and he told me a story that describes Silva perfectly,” former City team-mate Nedum Onuoha says. “Joe told me that David could have the best game of a generation, and have 10 assists, 10 incredible highlights and whatever, but then after the game, the thing he would want to talk to you about is the fact that he made a tackle. He’d want to get in your face and say, ‘Did you see that tackle though? Did you see that tackle I made?’ That’s who he is.”

In the past four years, he ranks fourth for the most tackles made and fourth for the most fouls conceded in the City squad, proving his value to Guardiola’s high-pressing game, but that grit and determination was there ever since he arrived. Among his favourite ever team-mates are the less-heralded Gareth Barry and James Milner, ultimate professionals.

Raheem Sterling is the only City player to have been fouled more than Silva since 2016, and Silva leaves England with a very low opinion of our referees, particularly from the middle part of his decade at the club when he was beset by constant ankle injuries.

Silva hates missing games, though, so elected to take pain-killing injections before games towards the end of Manuel Pellegrini’s reign to get him through matches. That sacrifice was also a factor when he signed his most recent contract extension, in 2017.

He wanted his deal to take him up until 2020, so he could bow out after a decade at City, an idea that was planted many years ago. But he also wanted a pay rise to take him closer to Aguero and Toure, partly as a reward for playing through the pain barrier so often.

Silva has a very clear idea of his value, at the same time as being generally shy, very private and family-centric. His family is extremely important to him, which is why he pulled the plug on a move to Lazio, even though it included the perk of a private plane back to Spain whenever he needed it.

He had already moved away from previous plans to play in Japan or Inter Miami, partly due to the realities of the post-COVID-19 world, and when Real Sociedad came calling, he couldn’t say no, as San Sebastian is even closer to his mum in Valencia and dad in Gran Canaria. He would have returned to Valencia had their financial situation not been as dire now as it was a decade ago.

He is still held in high regard there and trained at the club’s facilities while his son, Mateo, fought for his life after being born prematurely in December 2017. Silva’s partner Yessica gave birth after just 25 weeks, meaning their first child was kept on a ventilator for around four months, by which time he still weighed only five pounds. Another baby had been in the same unit for a year, meaning there were no guarantees Mateo would make a full recovery.

All is fine now but Silva calls it “the toughest, most difficult period” of his life. He did not sleep or eat properly and was constantly flying back between Manchester and Valencia and training on his own. But despite that, he had arguably his finest season for the club.

How to define his best season? Well, this is entirely the point. It is hard enough to quantify his talents, given he does not rely on numbers or highlight reels, let alone identify which of his 10 seasons in Manchester was best.

We could talk about his goals and assists, but that’s not the point. He’s not getting a statue because he scored 77 goals or provided 140 assists in his 10 years and 436 appearances in England. It wasn’t his box of tricks or lightning pace that sparked talk of him being City’s greatest ever player before Guardiola had even arrived.

It’s no surprise that the silkiest Premier League midfielders rate him, with James Maddison asking for his kit after their first meeting, Frank Lampard hailing him as the best player outside Chelsea, and Cesc Fabregas naming him in his all-time five-a-side team. But when Neil Warnock says, “I just absolutely love him to bits” and Roy Keane calls him “fantastic” and “an absolute little genius” that he would have hated to play against, you really start to get an idea.

But it just doesn’t need to be explained to City fans. It’s the feeling they got when he played, and the sense that something was missing when he didn’t. It’s for the dedication he continued to show to City, whether he was helping them win their first title in 2012 with 17 assists (if you are counting the numbers) or their historic “Centurion” third title in 2018 while going through the most difficult period of his life.

You could count the major trophies, the four Premier League titles, the two FA Cups (including the one in 2011 that got the whole thing started) and the five League Cups. Only John Terry and the longest-serving Manchester United players have won more Premier League titles than him.

But it’s not just that, it’s the stuff you can’t count, the stuff you can’t point to.

“Football intelligence is a massive thing. Massive, massive,” Lescott says. “You can develop it, but there’s only a certain level of development you can have. Can you make everyone as fast as Mbappe? No, you can’t, and you can’t make everyone as intelligent as David Silva, you just can’t. You can increase people’s intelligence and ability and attributes but that level is different.

“That’s the way I see it. People don’t value that as an attribute because people can’t see it. People can’t see how intelligent someone is but you can see how strong they are and how fast they are, but that side of it is so important.”

If you don’t know, now you know.

(Top photo: Getty Images)