Leicester City’s Adrien Silva still baffled at FIFA’s decision

It’s nearly eight months since Adrien Silva’s transfer saga, but the Portuguese has still not forgotten how FIFA messed his season up after Leicester City missed the deadline by 14 seconds.

The Foxes failed to submit the paperwork on time, and as a result, Silva was left wondering if he was a Leicester player or a Sporting Lisbon player.

Leicester City, with the backing of the English Football Association, even appealed the decision of world football’s supreme governing body; however, they remained stubborn, meaning that Adrien Silva had to simply earn his salary by watching his side from the stands.

Finally, the East Midlanders were able to register Silva in January, and the 29-year old has since been able to demonstrate his quality whenever given the chance to – but he still isn’t over FIFA’s decision. In an exclusive interview with The Guardian, he said:

"“I had some injuries in my career but then you know why you don’t play and that’s part of football, so you can accept it.“But this situation wasn’t correct. It wasn’t correct because I was able to play physically and I didn’t do anything wrong to make this situation.“I will never understand the decision of Fifa – even after Leicester had tried everything to change it. There is no protection for the players in this situation.“The players are the most important, so why don’t [Fifa] think about that and make some exception? OK, if it is so many hours [after the deadline], but we’re talking about seconds here. So I think it was a very poor decision.”"

Silva also spoke of how he remained hopeful that the decision could be overturned as he tried to maintain the physical levels required for the Premier League despite not being able to play for Leicester City.

"“But after Leicester and my lawyers told me that we could make an appeal, I got my hopes up and I tried to keep my head right,” he explains. “I trained alone at the gym and on a field to try to keep my physical condition because I wasn’t allowed to train with the team.”"

This, however, wasn’t the first time that Adrien Silva has had to sit out for a while on the sidelines. It was all the way back in 2005 when Jose Mourinho talked to Silva about a potential move to Chelsea, and that didn’t go down well with Sporting, who made Silva sit out for two months.

More than a decade later, the Portugal international is happy that he refused to join the Blues, having seen his teammates, Fabio Ferreira and Ricardo Fernandes, go four years without playing a game for Chelsea before being released.

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"“It was a very strange moment and I was so young,” Silva said.“To have this club approach me, especially when Mourinho comes to talk to you … at this time, we didn’t know why he came. But when the club wants something, they do everything. He came to see me in Portugal and we went there, to Chelsea, to see the training ground. Then we came back and it was a big, big situation with Sporting.“Thanks to God,” he added, as he approved of his decision to stay where he was."