Those who followed Adrien Silva’s transfer from Sporting to Leicester City back in 2017 surely remember how dramatic it was.
With the move not finalised before the deadline, the midfielder had to wait for six months until he could finally play for his new club.
This story was now recalled in the Portuguese media, as Silva was interviewed by the 1 Para 1 podcast, and the quotes are brought by Record.
He brought many details of how that happened, and made it clear there are still some hard feelings lingering.
“I think it must have been the most negative point in my career. I don’t think I ever told anyone publicly. I was in the national team at the time and I thought it wasn’t going to happen. Then I got a call to travel [to England] as soon as possible, because there was one day left. And I had to ask Fernando Santos for authorisation. I had promised the manager that I would train the next morning and that’s what happened. I had to travel through the night without sleeping and I trained, just as I had promised. But then the worst happened. Realising 10 days later that things hadn’t been done properly. And that’s when the hardest part began.”
The spell without playing wasn’t his only problem, with a managerial change making things even worse.
“I didn’t play for six months. Meanwhile, there was also a change of manager in those six months, who wasn’t the one who had signed me [Craig Shakespeare]. I thought it was going to be positive, but it turned out to be really negative. He didn’t count on me [Claude Puel]. He did everything to try and destabilise me. It’s easy to catch a coach who favours other qualities. But then when it comes to other things, it ends up being a bit more unpleasant and it was a very difficult four months to endure psychologically, because I wanted to carry on playing for the national team and I always had that in the back of my mind. I wanted to carry on because it was the year of the World Cup in Russia.”
Leicester City spent €20.5m to sign Silva from Sporting in 2017, and he only made 21 appearances for the club.
In January 2019, the Foxes loaned him out to AS Monaco. He stayed there until the summer of 2020, when Leicester City finally let him go on a permanent move, this time to Sampdoria.
Silva still played for Al-Wahda in the United Arab Emirates, and with the end of his contract, he spent six months without playing last year. It was only in January 2024 that he agreed a deal with Rio Ave in Portugal, where his contract is also expiring, and he’s again becoming a free agent this summer.
