Chelsea defender Thiago Silva has admitted that he wants to replicate AC Milan legend Paolo Maldini by playing until the age of 41 as the Brazilian prepares for international duty with El Selecao.
Silva, 37, added another star performance to his ever-growing portfolio this term with his 'brick-wall' mentality shown in the most recent win in the FA Cup against Middlesbrough. However, despite being in this twilight years, Chelsea's No.6 has no time to rest on his laurels with Tite selecting the former Paris Saint-Germain defender to be part of his squad for upcoming World Cup qualifiers against Chile and Bolivia.
The fact he is able to handle the burden at the latter stage of a star studded career justifies Marina Granovskaia's decision to renew his current deal by an extra year before the sanctions news rocked the club. The likes of Andreas Christensen, Antonio Rudiger and Cesar Azpilicueta are currently unable to negotiate any new contract in west London due to Roman Abramovich's big asset being frozen amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
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As it stands, the trio will be leaving unless the new ownership are able to negotiate once the new structure is in place. Even then, the short time span available will mean any deal will be rushed, meaning Chelsea need to prepare for the worse case scenario just in case they become even more powerless in this situation.
Silva's recent admission will come as music to the ears of the Blues faithful, with four more years the target from his point of view. "I hope I can do the same thing that Maldini did at Milan, playing until he was 40 or 41 years old," he said last year. "That’s my plan for the immediate future and I have prepared myself for that," he told the club's official website.
To be able to do this, training methods and regimes may have to alter slightly as his body ages, and the defender knows that the recovery process will be vitally important to meeting his Maldini target. "When you’re young, you think you’re a superhero," he admitted. "I’d play one game a day so in terms of recovery it was a lot quicker, whereas now 24 hours seems like no time at all in which to recover.
"You’ve always got to be active and up to speed with the new recovery methods out there. I’ve got lots of things I do at home like physio work, and nowadays I’ve got a better diet than before. You need to fuel yourself well, not with the bad stuff. "This is part of what I’ve got to do so that I can optimise this recovery process, which for me needs to be quicker."
