Thiago Silva is acutely aware of what is to come. The World Cup is the ultimate obsession for every Brazil player but for a senior figure like him, somebody with so much history, the man who is expected to wear the captain’s armband in Qatar, the intensity is ratcheted up even further.
It is no exaggeration to say that Silva has felt the countdown to the finals, which will get under way on 20 November, since his nation was knocked out of the 2018 tournament by Belgium in that epic quarter-final. It has certainly been the case since he joined Chelsea in the summer of 2020, the sense at the club pretty clear that everything has been building to this point for him.
