‘I retired at 22 during life-threatening illness – then came back to win Champions League’

Thiago Silva’s inspiring footballing career has seen him come back from the brink of death to win some of the sport’s biggest trophies and leave an ever-lasting legacy behind

Thiago Silva will be remembered as a defensive juggernaut and one of the greatest leaders in the modern football era when he decides to retire.

The Brazilian, 40, has enjoyed a glittering 23-year career which has taken him from Brazil to elite clubs in Portugal, Italy, France and England. He has won trophies everywhere, including a whopping seven Ligue 1 titles at Paris Saint-Germain and the Champions League with Chelsea.

Having left the Stamford Bridge club as a free agent at the end of the 2023/24 season, Silva returned to his boyhood club, Fluminense, last summer, marking his return 15 years after he first left. But few will know that the Brazil national team’s legendary captain – capped 113 times – almost saw his career end before it even began.

Silva started his senior club career in 2002, playing as a defensive midfielder for RS Futebol in Brazil before transitioning to his now well-known centre-back position during a six-month spell at Juventude.

His stellar performances earned him a move to Porto in 2004 but he failed to break into the first team, leading him to join Dynamo Moscow a year later, aged 19. But while in Russia, he was hospitalised with a near-fatal bout of tuberculosis.

Silva spent five months in hospital and would have died if he had been admitted two weeks later. He was advised to have part of his lung removed – which would have surely ended his career – but his family objected to the surgery.

The football icon once recalled: “Every now and then a doctor would come in and give me an injection, three or four times a day, plus 10-15 pills.”

His former Juventude coach, Ivo Wortmann, would save his career by finding a specialist in Portugal, who would become responsible for the treatment that cured the defender. After his full recovery, his mother persuaded him to make a miraculous return to football.

He told ESPN Brasil while still a Chelsea player last year: “Today, in Brazil, I am considered a crybaby. I don’t think I am better known in Europe than in Brazil, but I believe I am a little more respected here than there.

“People don’t see how strong I was. I fought tuberculosis and almost died. That made me very strong. Crying is not something that weak people do, it’s something that brave people do, and I was very brave in my life.”

Wortmann once again played the role of a guardian angel and took him to Fluminense, where Silva had played as a teenager from 1998 to 2000 after he was appointed coach in 2006. Once there, his career truly kicked off, being described as one of the best players of the 2006 season despite his side’s struggles.

His form over the next three seasons – which included a Copa do Brazil triumph – saw him become recognised as the best defender in Brazil and receive call-ups to the national team. Silva received a second crack at a career in Europe following a transfer to Italian giants AC Milan in 2009, where he won the Scudetto in 2010/11.

A record £38m transfer to PSG in 2012 made him the most expensive defender at the time before becoming the club’s longest-serving captain and winning an astonishing 23 trophies. His final performance for the Parisians came in the 2020 Champions League final defeat to Bayern Munich, which would have completed his trophy cabinet.

But that would not be the end for Silva as he made one of his best career decisions at the end of that season to join Chelsea on a free transfer as a 36-year-old veteran. Against all the odds, he won the Champions League in his first campaign, featuring in eight European matches, including the 1-0 win over Manchester City in the final.

Further success followed in his second season in the form of the UEFA Super Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup. And while Chelsea would struggle in the following seasons, Silva remained a consistent performer, being crowned the team’s player of the year for 2022/23 and becoming the club’s oldest-ever goalscorer in November 2023.

Having made his homecoming to Brazil, Silva captained his club 15 times in the Brazilian Serie A and four times in the Copa Libertadores last season. The 40-year-old has made four appearances so far in the 2025 season.

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