Ex Arsenal, Atlético Mineiro and Brazil player Gilberto Silva officially announced his retirement from football on Friday. The 39 year old hasn’t played a competitive match since a 2-2 draw between Atlético Mineiro and Vitoria in December 2013, after aggravating a knee injury. The World Cup winner required several surgeries on a meniscus tear, after returning too early from a knee problem picked up in July 2013.
Gilberto won a Premier League title and two F.A. Cups with Arsenal, the Greek Superliga and Greek Cup with Panathinaikos, the Copa Libertadores and two Campeonato Mineiros with Atlético Mineiro and the 2002 World Cup with Brazil, where he became a household name. Filling in for the injured Emerson in a defensive midfield role during that tournament, Brazilian journalist and ex-player Tostão heralded the Minas born player’s understated role in the tournament, gushing that “he carried the piano for Ronaldo and Ronaldinho to play their tunes on.”
Gilberto started as a centre half with Belo Horizonte club América Mineiro, close to his hometown of Lagoa da Prata in Minas Gerais. Gilberto was a promising footballer as a youth, but originally turned his back on the game at the age of 15 as his mother fell ill. With his father retired, Gilberto began a series of menial jobs, as a furniture maker, a labourer and working in a sweet factory, to help pay for his mother’s health care.
At age 18, he was convinced by friends to try his luck in football again and rejoined América Mineiro, where he won the Brasileirão Serie B in 1998. Here caught the eye of América’s city rivals Atlético, transferring to Galo in 2000, winning the Campeonato Mineiro in his first season. In 2001, Galo coach Carlos Alberto Parreira moved Gilberto into a defensive midfield role, where he flourished and earned international recognition. He was called up for the 2002 World Cup squad.
On the eve of the tournament, first choice volante Emerson was injured and Gilberto was thrust into the starting XI. He played a starring role in the tournament as Brazil won their fifth World Cup title in Japan and South Korea. His performances earned attention from European clubs and particularly Arsene Wenger. Gilberto moved to Arsenal for £4.5m in August 2002.
The move was difficult to complete, due to a transfer ban placed on Galo at the time, but Arsenal were persistent in pursuit of their man. At Arsenal, Gilberto was a revelation, though his subtlety often went unappreciated by supporters. In London, he won a Premier League title undefeated and two F.A. Cups, he also played in the 2006 Champions League final, which Arsenal lost to Barcelona.
In 2006-07, Gilberto captained the club in the absence of Thierry Henry and won Arsenal’s Player of the Season award, scoring a career best ten goals during that campaign. When Thierry Henry left for Barcelona in the summer of 2007, it was fully expected that he would be appointed to the captaincy on a full-time basis.
But Arsene Wenger opted instead for William Gallas, a decision which Gilberto would read about on the internet, causing friction between player and manager. Gilberto’s Arsenal career took a further turn for the worse when he returned from captaining his country to Copa América victory in 2007. His place in the Arsenal side had been taken by the in-form Mathieu Flamini.
Gilberto’s unhappiness was such that he refused the captain’s armband for a league cup tie with Sheffield United, leaving Lukasz Fabianski to do the honours. Arsenal gave Gilberto a free transfer in the summer of 2008, despite there being a year left on his contract. This was to help him secure a better salary at his next club Panathinaikos- a gesture Arsenal executed both in acknowledgment of his service to the club and, probably, as an apology for not personally informing him that he had been overlooked for the captaincy.
Gilberto moved to Athens where he spent three years with Panathinaikos, winning the Greek Championship in 2010 as well as the Greek Cup. In 2011, he returned to Brazil with Porto Alegre side Grêmio, where he moved back to centre half. Here, Gilberto enjoyed a renaissance, particularly during the 2012 season when the Gaucho club finished 3rd in the Brasileirão.
In December 2012, his homecoming was complete as he returned to Minas, signing with his old club Atlético Mineiro. Acting as the club’s third choice centre half, he won the Copa Libertadores with Galo in July 2013. Four days later, he tore his meniscus in a clasico against Belo Horizonte rivals Cruzeiro at the Mineirão.
Gilberto spent four months on the sidelines, returning just in time for Atlético’s ill-fated World Club Cup campaign, which saw the team embarrassingly eliminated by Raja Casablanca at the semi-final stage. But Gilberto rushed his return and his meniscus gave way again. Galo opted not to renew his contract in January 2014 and the injury prevented Gilberto from signing with another club.
The player says that he had contact with his first club América Mineiro, who were desperate to procure his signature, but Gilberto refuted their advances as he underwent surgeries on his knee. Gilberto brought legal action against Atlético, alleging that he had been subjected to poor medical care. He also claimed fees for time spent travelling to Morocco during the Club World Cup with the team.
Gilberto has been clubless for two years, but during this hiatus, he became a very active voice in the Bom Senso FC movement. Bom Senso is an active players’ union in Brazil committed to better playing conditions and structural reform in Brazilian football. They also rail against the corruption endemic at the top of the Brazilian game.
With a World Cup, a Premier League title, two F.A. Cups, a Greek Superliga title, a Greek Cup, two Campeonato Mineiros, a Copa Libertadores, a Copa América, two Confederation Cups and one World Cup under his belt, Gilberto officially pulled the curtain down on an illustrious career on Friday. He says he wants to become an international consultant for clubs and players on a freelance basis.
Arsenal offered him the chance to study for his coaching badges in early 2014, but the player declined, saying he was not yet ready to give up on his playing career. Gilberto is revered as a humble and diligent person, qualities reflected in his football, where he was characterised as a team player, ready and willing to perform undercelebrated but crucial tasks to help his team.
Yet Gilberto was a strong willed man that knew his own mind. His role as a spokesman challenging the established order in Brazilian football demonstrates this. He was not afraid to challenge Arsene Wenger or forego sentiment and take his boyhood club Atlético Mineiro to court when he felt wronged by them.
As a player and a personality, Gilberto is the archetypal Mineiro. Natives of Minas Gerais are characterised as humble, hard-working and for only speaking when absolutely necessary. There is a popular saying in Brazil that “a Mineiro eats with his mouth closed.” But perhaps Gilberto ought to be more closely associated with the words of Sophocles, who said, “The wise man speaks when he has something to say, the fool speaks when he has to say something.”
As a player and a man, Gilberto is an interventionalist, at his most visible and audible in times of strife. Whether it be corruption at the heart of football, or a vaguely threatening through ball from an opponent, Gilberto emerges with his bayonet where menace lurks. Like a comic book superhero, he is happy to dwell silently in the shadows, appearing only when danger is present.
As an Arsenal fan and an Atléticano, it is difficult to imagine that a footballer could ever mean more to me than Gilberto Silva does. I was at every single one of the professional matches he played for Arsenal and I was in the Estádio Mineirão the night he lofted the Copa Libertadores trophy above his head in the alvinegra shirt of Galo.
From a personal standpoint, it is impossible to believe that a footballer will ever repeat those feats across my two clubs. To Gilberto; World Champion, Champion of the Americas, Invincible and a World Class gentleman, a salute and happy retirement. I hope that one day he is able to represent Arsenal or Atlético in some other guise.
