Youthful Chelsea ready for Thiago Silva reunion at Club World Cup
Chelsea's young side are targeting a place in the final of the Club World Cup when they take on Fluminense in the last four on Tuesday, with the Brazilian team marshalled by former Blues defender Thiago Silva who is still going strong at the age of 40.
Silva was already a veteran when he signed for Chelsea in 2020 before going on to have an impressive four-year stint at Stamford Bridge.
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One of the finest centre-backs of his generation, Silva arrived after eight years at Paris Saint-Germain and in his first season at Chelsea won the UEFA Champions League.
He played 155 games for the London club and left 12 months ago after helping oversee the development of some of the young talents now featuring regularly under Enzo Maresca.
"He's a legend of football, a top player," Marc Cucurella, a teammate of Silva's for two years, told English media, adding that the two had exchanged messages about their impending reunion.
"We have the opportunity to play against him again and hopefully we can do good things, win this game and play in the final."
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Silva initially made his name at Fluminense, featuring in the team that reached the Copa Libertadores final in 2008 before losing to LDU Quito of Ecuador.
He returned there upon leaving Chelsea, once again pulling on the green, red and white of the Rio de Janeiro outfit who won the Copa Libertadores in 2023.
The evergreen Brazil international was then reunited earlier this year with Renato Gaucho, the coach in 2008 who is now in his sixth spell in charge.
An impressive run at the Club World Cup has seen Fluminense hold Borussia Dortmund in the group stage, eliminate Inter Milan in the last 16 and get the better of Saudi powerhouse Al Hilal in the quarter-finals.
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"If you had asked me beforehand if we would have got this far I would have said we were a long way away from doing so," Silva told broadcaster DAZN after the victory over Al Hilal.
"We know the financial size of these teams, the difference is enormous, absurd. But often our collective, the family atmosphere that we have, gives us strength that you maybe don't think you have."
- Brazilian opposition again -
It is not just Silva raising the average age at Fluminense. There is also 44-year-old goalkeeper Fabio, wing-back Samuel Xavier at 35 and 37-year-old Argentine forward German Cano.
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But the man giving them the X-factor is 27-year-old Colombian winger Jhon Arias, unquestionably one of the players of the tournament.
"I have watched some games that they have played and you can see that they are very well organised. They have some very good players. The manager is doing a fantastic job," Maresca said as he prepares to face Brazilian opposition for the third time at the tournament.
They lost to Flamengo in the group stage but beat Palmeiras in the quarter-finals in Philadelphia.
"The energy from Brazilian teams in this competition has been high -- probably the reason why is because they are at the start of their season while we are finished the season," Maresca added.
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Chelsea now get their first taste of the MetLife Stadium, the hulking 82,500-capacity venue in East Rutherford, New Jersey, just outside New York City.
Many of Maresca's players may not have been sure what to make of FIFA's new tournament which came at the end of a campaign in which they finished fourth in the Premier League and won the UEFA Conference League.
But suddenly they stand one game from the final, in which they would face either Real Madrid or PSG.
With Silva gone, Maresca has been working with a young squad at Chelsea, and the average age of his starting line-up against Palmeiras last Friday was just 24.
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There are more young players coming in too, with 23-year-old Brazilian forward Joao Pedro, formerly of Fluminense, making his debut in the quarter-finals.
Brazil prodigy Estevao Willian, 18, will join from Palmeiras ahead of next season and 20-year-old winger Jamie Gittens has just signed from Borussia Dortmund.
Moises Caicedo, the midfield linchpin who is still only 23, will return to the midfield against Fluminense after suspension.
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Acute gastroenteritis kept him out of much of Real Madrid's Club World Cup campaign, before an anonymous performance against PSG as his side were eliminated. Nevertheless, the individual numbers were strong for the 26-year-old during his first year in Spain. In May, Mbappe surpassed Ivan Zamorano's record of 37 goals (1992-93) scored in all competitions in a debut season for Madrid. Similarly, Mbappe broke Real Madrid legend Alfredo Di Stefano's record of 27 goals in a debut La Liga season (1953-54), finishing the campaign with 31 league goals. Sadly, individual numbers only get you so far in the Ballon d'Or reckonings, and overall, Madrid disappointed in Carlo Ancelotti's final season in charge. It would be a huge surprise if Mbappe managed to top the list in September. Two excellent finishes against Flamengo in Bayern Munich's last-16 victory encapsulated everything Kane is about. Barely looking up to see where the goal was, Kane was dead-eyed as he struck both efforts into the corner in acts of pure muscle memory. In truth, Bayern's exploits in the Club World Cup did little to move the dial in Kane's favour to lift the Ballon d'Or, but across the year, Kane's 26 goals were the most in the Bundesliga as the 31-year-old clinched the first trophy of his career. More broadly, only Dembele and Omar Marmoush had a higher rate of goals plus assists than Kane's 1.3 per 90 minutes across Europe's big five leagues. With back-to-back Kicker-Torjagerkanone's (the Bundesliga top goalscorer trophy) on his mantelpiece, people have perhaps taken Kane's productivity for granted in recent years. In a world where reliable out-and-out No 9s are a little trickier to come by, Kane is as much of a guarantee for goals as any player in world football.
