Aside from at Euro 2012, the performances of the Spanish duo at Manchester City and Barcelona have been persistently below par this year.
At Euro 2012, Cesc Fabregas and David Silva both scored twice, the former netting also netting the decisive penalty in the semi-final shoot out against Portugal, and setting up the latter for the opening goal in the final itself. Both of them looked sharp, comfortable in possession, fluid in their movement and entirely happy within themselves. They looked exactly how you would expect them to look, each were in their prime, Fabregas was playing for his boyhood club, Silva had just won the title with Manchester City.
However each had been in poor form for their club leading up to the tournament, and since then both have continued to fail to reach their peak. Football is undoubtably worse off without Fabregas and Silva on top form, and their respective managers will be desperate to see them back to their best. This is even more the case with Silva, as he is so vital to Manchester City’s success.
Silva scored 6 goals and made 15 assists in the league last season, of these the only goal scored after December came in a 4-0 win over West Brom, and he made only 3 assists after January. Indeed his declining influence clearly affected CIty badly, as they stuttered and very nearly surrendered the league to Manchester United. Silva was still attempting plenty of his intricate through balls, but the drop off in accuracy meant he stopped creating as many goals. Having then gone away and been excellent with the national team, City will have hoped he would return rejuvenated, and pick up the league form he showed in the early part of last season, but this has not been the case. Mancini has shown a reluctance to play Silva so far, worrying that his star midfielder might be jaded from international duty, but in the 5 appearances he has made, Silva has only contributed one assist.
Cesc Fabregas form has followed almost exactly the same trajectory in his time at Barcelona. He came into his first season firing on all cylinders, scoring in his first four league games. He went on to contribute 8 goals and 5 assists in his 12 appearances for Barcelona in 2011. In 2012, his stats are 1 goal and 3 assists in 19 games. Like Silva, Fabregas was excellent for Spain at Euro 2012, but was in poor form heading into the tournament, and has come back to Barcelona still looking out of sorts at club level.
Spain’s heavy international schedule is likely to have had an impact on all their regular players, but Fabregas and Silva’s continuing poor form cannot be blamed entirely on this. Whatever the causes are of these parallel slumps, football fans can only hope they don’t last much longer.
It seems that Spain currently have the reverse problem to England in terms of their midfielders, whereas the likes the Gerrard and Lampard have often failed to produce their club form on the international stage, Fabregas and Silva’s best performances in 2012 have come when playing for their country.
image: © letsbikeit
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