And so passes my favourite footballer of all time.
I remember when he first came to City, and that old Paul Merson proverb followed him around. "Will someone of his stature be able to cope with the physical nature of the Premier League?" Well, I can't ever recall hearing that question asked once he started playing regularly. Silva bent the Premier League to his will. He had this unmatched ability to not only control the pace of an individual game, but the aesthetics of the sport as a whole. Nobody plays the game like he does. It's not just that he "sees the passes nobody else does", it's the way he holds his body and moves with the ball - and the fact that he's left-footed on top of that, to be honest. You could easily pick him out a line-up just from the way he stands.
There are almost too many moments to list as examples of his brilliance - the goal at Loftus Road, that mid-air dragback against Bournemouth, the pass to Dzeko for number six - but his performance away at Hull City during the 2014 title chase always stands out for me. Down to ten men, our captain sent off after ten minutes, Javi Garcia and Martin Demichelis as our centre-back pairing, Silva might has well have taken the armband himself in that moment. He dragged us through the game with a brilliant goal from distance in the first half and then a gorgeous assist for Dzeko late on. He constantly made sure that Hull never got a foothold in the contest and made sure we left with three valuable points we never looked like getting.
The time is right, but the heart-breaking countdown has begun.
I remember when he first came to City, and that old Paul Merson proverb followed him around. "Will someone of his stature be able to cope with the physical nature of the Premier League?" Well, I can't ever recall hearing that question asked once he started playing regularly. Silva bent the Premier League to his will. He had this unmatched ability to not only control the pace of an individual game, but the aesthetics of the sport as a whole. Nobody plays the game like he does. It's not just that he "sees the passes nobody else does", it's the way he holds his body and moves with the ball - and the fact that he's left-footed on top of that, to be honest. You could easily pick him out a line-up just from the way he stands.
There are almost too many moments to list as examples of his brilliance - the goal at Loftus Road, that mid-air dragback against Bournemouth, the pass to Dzeko for number six - but his performance away at Hull City during the 2014 title chase always stands out for me. Down to ten men, our captain sent off after ten minutes, Javi Garcia and Martin Demichelis as our centre-back pairing, Silva might has well have taken the armband himself in that moment. He dragged us through the game with a brilliant goal from distance in the first half and then a gorgeous assist for Dzeko late on. He constantly made sure that Hull never got a foothold in the contest and made sure we left with three valuable points we never looked like getting.
The time is right, but the heart-breaking countdown has begun.