Former Leeds United goalkeeper Marco Silvestri has detailed his struggles dealing with the long Championship season during his time at Elland Road.
Silvestri played for Leeds between 2014 and 2017, joining the club in a €500,000 deal from Chievo Verona.
The move to Leeds was his first outside of Italy, where he had played for Modena since his youth days before joining Chievo in 2011.
They sent him out on various loan deals over the years to the likes of Reggiana, Padova and Cagliari Calcio before eventually selling him to Leeds.
He went on to make 98 appearances for the Whites in total, establishing himself as their number one over several seasons before moving back to Italy with Hellas Verona in 2017.
He’s now looked back on his time at Elland Road and admits he didn’t play well, or deal with the long seasons in England’s second tier.
“England is a different story. Before arriving, I had just come back from six months at Chievo and as many at Cagliari,” Tutto Cagliari report him saying.
“In my first year here, with Cellino, we were many Italians and it was quite easy to integrate. The English helped us, it was difficult football wise initially and I remember i struggled a lot, I wasn’t playing well.
“The Championship is tough physically and technically, tactics are taken into account less. Then the league is very long, endless.
“I got almost to 92 games, it seemed like it would never end. You arrive in February thinking you are at the end, but in reality there are still 20 games to go.”
