António Silva on Portugal: “If Pepe erred, they’d not treat me the same” | OneFootball

António Silva feels he is a prime target for criticism. The Benfica defender even speaks of “persecution”, arguing that the idea has been created that “it’s António’s fault” and lamenting the way his mistakes started being magnified after he joined the Eagles’ first team. Even so, there is one episode while on duty with the national team that the centre-back has not forgotten, as he said in an interview on João Oliveira’s YouTube channel, known online as ‘JOliveira10’.

“I don’t like playing the victim,” he began. “But I think there is a persecution. There’s this idea that ‘it’s António’s fault’,” he said, then shifting the focus to what he can “control”: “I know I do my job well. I’m the first to arrive at the training centre, I’m the first to go to the gym, I’m the first to have breakfast, I’m the first to go to physio. It’s my life, it’s what I love, and that’s what I can control.”

“From that point on, things took on a huge dimension that, in my opinion, makes no sense. I was 19 or 20, and really it should have been a bit the other way around. They should have supported a Portuguese player representing Benfica and the national team. It would have been good for the national team, for the country, to support him rather than keep hammering him,” said the defender, referring to Georgia-Portugal at Euro 2024.

António Silva even considers the episode linked to the national team to have been “clearly exaggerated”. The defender compared the situation with mistakes made by other centre-backs, including Pepe, who slipped against Slovenia and almost allowed the opponent to score, in a match that ended with a 3-0 Portuguese win on penalties. “In that same tournament [Euro 2024], Pepe made a mistake that is perfectly normal, which didn’t lead to a goal, but if it had, they wouldn’t do the same to him as they do to me, because Pepe is Pepe. It’s incomparable. But just to say that in the same way I made a mistake at 20, Pepe made one at 41. I’ll make mistakes when I’m 30 or 35. Nico [Otamendi] does it too, Tomás [Araújo] does it too, making mistakes is part of our position. And it’s normal for centre-backs to make mistakes during the season, because otherwise there wouldn’t be any goals either. It’s part of football,” he reflected.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.