Thiago Silva has been a key part of PSG’s success for nearly a decade. However, everything must come to an end. This is why everything indicates that 35-year-old Thiago Silva will not renew his contract. He still has a chance to end his stay at PSG with the great triumph that could be winning the UEFA Champions League. At the time of writing, they are set to compete in the final.
It is unclear where Silva will end his career, but PSG need to be ready for his departure. This is why they need to have a replacement ready. This substitute could be experienced or a young, future star. We have made this data analysis to search for a potential replacement for Silva.
This research is based on certain data and statistics and does not evaluate other data. Therefore, this analysis serves to be a starting point to find a suitable replacement for Silva. A more detailed analysis of the players and watching them live would be needed to get a whole understanding of the players.
Selection criteria
For this report, we will find potential replacements from centre-backs in the top five leagues. These leagues are Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, and Ligue 1. We do this because these leagues contain most of the best players in professional football. This is needed as Thiago Silva has been one of the best centre-backs in Europe these seasons and so the replacement has to be of a high level.
We have also only looked at players who are 29 or younger. PSG will want their centre-back to be relatively young or to have many more years of football ahead, hence the age restriction. Additionally, the players researched have played a minimum of 1000 minutes this season, to make sure there is a fair comparison between players.
This avoids players having inflated statistics because maybe a centre-back has played fewer minutes, and so, has better stats, but this does not make him a better player.
Defensive duels
The defending duels for a PSG centre-back are very important. Since they are a team that dominates in their league, they need to be very effective in their defensive duels. Thus, we are essentially looking at players with a high success rate and not as much at the number of defensive duels. This is because PSG centre-backs do not make many defensive duels as they usually have possession of the ball.
To use him as a benchmark, this season Silva made 3.85 defensive duels per game with a 71.83% success rate.
