Brazil defender Thiago Silva is relishing captaining his country once more in Friday's World Cup Group E clash with Costa Rica in St Petersburg.
The experienced Paris Saint-Germain centre-back was skipper for the 2014 World Cup on home soil but missed the 7-1 semifinal humiliation against Germany through suspension and was stripped of the armband when Dunga replaced Luiz Felipe Scolari in the aftermath.
Current head coach Tite has opted to rotate the captaincy and Real Madrid left-back Marcelo led the Selecao during their opening 1-1 draw against Switzerland.
Silva told a pre-match news conference at Krestovsky Stadium: "To me it's not a problem, I think the main thing is to give your best regardless of whether you're the captain or not. Everyone has a great responsibility
"We managed to share this responsibility on the pitch.
"First we had Marcelo, then Miranda. All of us have individual characteristics and we are all ready to be captain when the coach decides.
"The team are aware we are facing a national team that is highly qualified. They played beautiful matches in Brazil [at the last World Cup], we followed them closely.
"They are ready to recover. The fight is on and we're ready for it."
Tite spoke warmly of his captain for this week and mocked the notion that Silva's involvement in the ill-fated 2014 campaign should somehow count against him.
"If we took out everybody who's been criticised in the last World Cup there would be nobody playing, we wouldn't even have a national team," he said.
"Life and football are not like that.
"I coherently said there were a group of important players who would be able to continue with this captaincy and Thiago is one of them."
Comments
SHARE