COMMENT: The player talks like it's fait accompli. And his manager is offering little resistance. All signs show that Chelsea will allow Thiago Silva to slip away come June. And with that, another blundering error will be made...
It's crazy. But it's typical. Typical of this Chelsea. Today's Chelsea. No respect for what went before them. No willingness to explore what brought this club to it's position in the game. Let's not mince words. The success of Thiago Silva this season. At the age of 39. It shames this board and their football department. It makes a mockery of their '24 and under' transfer policy. The Brazilian is not only Chelsea's best performing defender, Thiago is their best performing player. Full stop. Yet this lot are happy to let him go.
“I don't have anything scheduled for later," the veteran admitted after helping Chelsea reach the Carabao Cup final last week. "There's nothing scheduled here.
"Now, the future belongs to God. Let's finish well here, this and those four months and see what has to happen going forward. But I'm super relaxed about that.
"I know that with each game that ends I have a feeling that it's ending, so that makes me a little sad..."
Quizzed about Thiago's words on Thursday, there was no demand to the board from Mauricio Pochettino. No insistence that his most important player be handed a chance to go around again next season.
Instead, the manager toed the company line. Offering, limply, "That question is more for him than for me. Because I didn't hear, I don't know. Only he knows, and of course the club if it is going to be the last season or not.
"Even at his age, could he be someone that can help the team not only this season, but into the next season?
"I think always we talk about the present. I think it's important because for him, it's to keep fit. And at his age, I think he's doing fantastic and we are so happy with him. What is going to happen in the future, that's about him and the club."
This column admires Pochettino. We believe he's the right man for Chelsea. But that was weak. Soft. Poch either wants him around or not. The manager is the best man to make such a decision. And he shouldn't be getting splinters with his status in the game.
But putting two and two together, it's obvious they're going to let Thiago Silva go. The reason? Who knows? It can't be for form. It can't be fitness. Nor leadership. Nor influence around the club. When you start adding up all the positives of what the Brazilian brings to Chelsea every day, it's a football decision that makes no sense at all.
And as we say, it runs against the tradition of Chelsea FC. Against the culture of the club. A culture that says: we're the destination; that final step in a player's career. It's an attitude that saw Ken Bates bring Ruud Gullit to London to transform the English game. Gianluca Vialli. Franco Zola. Marcel Desailly. Even rescuing Claude Makelele from unappreciative Real Madrid president Florentino Perez.
Then onto the Roman Abramovich era. The Russian happy standing by stalwarts like Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard and John Terry. Bringing in Deco. Olivier Giroud. Bates established this approach and Abramovich carried it forward. For any elite player, Chelseawere among those clubs regarded as a 'final destination'. To compete. To win trophies. Indeed, it's what convinced Thiago Silva, now four years ago, to choose the Blues when leaving PSG. The manager who convinced him one steeped in the traditions of Chelsea's attitude towards the market. Frank Lampard had seen up close what such class can do for a team and had no hesitation bringing the Brazilian, then 35, to the Bridge.
“Thiago is another version of an amazing player who has come here at the back end of his career," Lamps stated just last season, "bought into the club, had a successful win in the Champions League and is an incredible centre-back.
"I knew that, I say knew that when I brought him to the club, I thought he was a top player, I didn't realise how good he is."
Lampard gets it. He understands it. He talks like a Chelsea man here, through-and-through. But such personalities are now thin on the ground at Cobham. No respect of what went before them. No acknowledgement of how the modern version of Chelsea FC was built.
And with that, they'll allow their best performing player to slip away - and for nothing. Just another blundering decision made by this board with little connection to football.
