A little after the clock struck 12 on the night when David Silva, 37, ran 10 kilometres, completed more passes, won more possession, made more tackles, created more chances and provided more assists than anyone else; the delirious, noisy night when everybody bounced about and he led his team – the fifth of a career that began 19 years ago and isn’t ending any time soon – to victory over the European champions and the cusp of a Champions League place for the first time in a decade, his manager was asked what exactly they were giving him up in San Sebastián. For a moment Imanol Alguacil paused, then a smile crept across his face. “Our thanks,” he said.
The Real Sociedad coach was not, he said, just speaking for everyone here but everyone everywhere: “For all football fans and everyone who loves the game”. Mostly, though, he spoke for the 35,314 people inside the Reale Arena, txuri-urdines like him, who are living the best days of their lives and who stood to applaud as Silva finally departed in the 90th minute of his 907th match, his work done the way only he can do it. Clapping so hard their hands hurt, they accompanied him to the touchline, where Alguacil lifted him in his arms, and then they began bowing before him. “It makes you proud that he is with us,” the coach said.
They never imagined him being here; now they can barely imagine him not being. “One day I was flicking through the papers: ‘David Silva signs for Real Sociedad’. It was a shock,” Nacho Monreal recalled, and Monreal played for Real Sociedad. On the final day of 2019-20 season, Martin Ødegaard told his delighted teammates he was staying for another season; on the eve of the 2020-21 season, though, Real Madrid decided differently, recalling him from his loan deal a year early. La Real were stuck, a hole torn in their team: “orphaned”, in Monreal’s words. Which is when, scrambling for a fix, someone had an idea. Next thing they knew, there was a World Cup winner standing there.
“The club handled it very well and above all very fast,” Monreal recalled. “You have to applaud that.” From “how about trying Silva?” to actually signing him, less than 24 hours passed, a wild idea becoming a reality before it was even a rumour. He had agreed to go to Lazio; instead, he was heading back to Spain a decade after leaving. Not just back to Spain, but to Gipuzkoa, its smallest, most productive province, a place with more footballers per capita than anywhere else and the place where he started, in the rain and the mud, at second-division Eibar. It didn’t seem like a long-term solution, and it might not have been a solution at all. Silva was 34, after all.
Three years on he’s still there and he’s not leaving yet. Standing in the place he likes less than any other – in front of a microphone – the first question Silva was asked on Tuesday night began: “Please don’t retire …” “One day I’ll have to, but I’m enjoying it,” he replied and soon he will announce that he is continuing for another year. And why wouldn’t he? Look where that year will be: victory over Real Madrid leaves Real Sociedad seven points clear of Villarreal in fourth, with five games to go, heading back to the Champions League.
Silva is the triumph of simplicity, which fits perfectly at la Real, the kind of club you wish yours could be. That’s one way to put it. Another is this, offered by one of those closest to him: in this world, all noise and presumptuousness and nonsense, here’s a bloke who buys his trousers in Zara. If not enough has been made of Silva over the years, if not enough has been said, the volume too rarely raised, the person most guilty of that is Silva himself. A man who loves football but can’t be bothered with all the stuff that comes with it, who doesn’t like the media attention one bit – he has won it all but acts like he hasn’t won anything. This is the player who told his boot manufacturers they could do what they liked with the colours and designs, he didn’t care, just don’t mess with the leather. Playing: that’s all that matters. And he is very, very good at it, always has been. “He might barely measure 1.50m but he has talent to die for,” as Pepe Reina put it.
The temperament too. To die for and to kill with. José Luis Mendilibar, his coach at Eibar, always refers to him as a competitive little bastard, telling stories of flying into tackles, training on rugby pitches in the snow. Roberto Olabe, La Real’s sporting director, talks about a player who is “extraordinary” but also an example: and this club, built around their Zubieta academy, whose team against Madrid had eight homegrown players in it, needed that. Someone to lead without ever presuming to lead. Someone to play their way, Silva fits their identity, a style that remains even as the structure evolves, not just across the last three seasons but within this one: a team that played a narrow midfield diamond returning to the wings and opening up with Mikel Oyarzabal’s return.
“Sometimes I look at our midfielders and I can’t believe it, they never lose the ball,” Take Kubo says. “They get out of complicated situations as if it was nothing. They hardly lose a ball … and when they do lose one, they press like animals to get it back and they give us another one.” As Alguacil puts it: “This is a team with loads of quality, but they press. Watch David Silva press. He’s 37, a world champion, it’s mad. And that’s an example for every player. For me, it’s a privilege to have players like that.”
It’s certainly not just Silva, and it’s not even just the players: there’s something special about Alguacil too, the former player, fan, youth coach and initially reluctant first-team manager who made them one of the best, most fun teams in Spain and led them to a historic Copa del Rey success against Athletic Club, who has taken more points from Madrid than anyone in the last five years, and now this.
“I’ll go out and get the papers tomorrow: a souvenir,” Kubo grinned. “When I was a kid there wasn’t much football on the telly in Japan, but the Champions League was, and I would set my alarm – with the anthem. I want to hear that music in the ground.” The Tuesday night late kick-off was at a “really shit” time, Alguacil had said, but they came anyway and had a great time. “My son messaged me to say he enjoyed it tonight: I told him he has to enjoy it every night,” the coach revealed. It had been fun, relentless. “Real go by motorbike, the rest of the league are on pushbikes,” as one report put it.
It was put to Alguacil that he only didn’t lift Alex Sørloth the way he lifted Silva because the Norwegian’s a big lad and he couldn’t. “Hey, I’m from Orio: I could,” the coach shot back. Kubo is on nine goals now and reaching the level he had in his mind but that was never quite a reality – and it’s Kubo who says that, laying responsibility and gratitude at la Real’s door. Martín Zubimendi is the new Xabi Alonso, or so everyone keeps saying, not entirely without reason. Early in the season, Brais Méndez could lay claim to be the season’s best signing. Mikel Merino is almost the perfect midfielder, able to do everything. And on and on it goes.
And yet Silva still stands out. Having arrived in San Sebastián with Edu, the same personal physio he’s been working with for 16 years, careful about his preparation, he’s in his best shape since returning. This season, injuries avoided, he’s getting the continuity it has not always been easy to come by, enjoying his football as much as ever. Not long ago, Alguacil said “he could play for any national team in the world”, which might not be entirely true but you knew what he meant, especially here on Real Sociedad’s big night, their third win in four nudging them ever closer to an objective, a dream, that should not escape them now.
That should be it!
— Viaplay Sports UK (@ViaplaySportsUK) May 2, 2023
The hosts lead by two as Barrenetxea gets his goal with a low finish 🎯
Wonderful play by David Silva to make the assist for the goal 👏🅰️#LaLigaSantander pic.twitter.com/f3BDPrK8Ss
“You saw what Silva did: at 37 that’s mad,” Kubo said. “One thing’s for sure: at his age, I won’t be able to produce a performance like that.” Asked to define Silva’s performance, Alguacil went for “sublime”. It was ridiculous. It was not just that he provided an assist for the second, it was the way he won the ball back in the first place. It was that he did everything: 95% of his passes completed, 86 touches, nine balls won, five tackles made, three chances created. No one had more, the stats as real as they are absurd, Eneko Carrasco asking an enjoyably simple question in El Diario Vasco: “Why are you so good?” This, the paper claimed, was “another clinic from the magician from Arguineguín.” It was class, close to perfection.
“When David Silva is physically fit, pfff,” Alguacil said. “There are very few players who can do what he does, what he did tonight. But it’s not tonight, against a great team from the Champions League, it is every day: even when we went to play in the cup at Coria [in Spain’s tercera division, the country’s amateur fifth tier]. I’m proud he’s here, we’re lucky to have him. I no longer have words to describe how I feel about David.” Well, there was one: thanks.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Barcelona | 33 | 49 | 82 |
| 2 | Atletico Madrid | 33 | 34 | 69 |
| 3 | Real Madrid | 33 | 37 | 68 |
| 4 | Real Sociedad | 33 | 14 | 61 |
| 5 | Villarreal | 33 | 13 | 54 |
| 6 | Real Betis | 32 | 2 | 49 |
| 7 | Athletic Bilbao | 32 | 11 | 47 |
| 8 | Girona | 32 | 5 | 44 |
| 9 | Osasuna | 33 | -6 | 44 |
| 10 | Rayo Vallecano | 32 | -3 | 43 |
| 11 | Sevilla | 32 | -9 | 41 |
| 12 | Mallorca | 32 | -4 | 41 |
| 13 | Celta Vigo | 33 | -8 | 39 |
| 14 | Almeria | 33 | -16 | 36 |
| 15 | Cadiz | 33 | -23 | 35 |
| 16 | Valladolid | 32 | -26 | 35 |
| 17 | Valencia | 33 | -4 | 34 |
| 18 | Getafe | 33 | -12 | 34 |
| 19 | Espanyol | 32 | -15 | 31 |
| 20 | Elche | 33 | -39 | 16 |
