It was soon time for him to begin his rehabilitation and with his positive attitude, he had already won half the battle. While he waited to travel to Italy to be fitted with a prosthetic limb, he spent his time receiving a succession of phone calls offering him support. “This shows that as well as leaving your mark as a footballer, you also left your mark as a human being,” he says, recalling all the messages he received from former teammates, fans and journalists … although at times it could all be overwhelming: “On arriving home, I would find I had received hundreds of e-mails and the phone wouldn’t stop ringing all day. Journalists would call with the best of intentions, concerned for the state of my health and 1 would politely answer exactly the same questions a hundred times a day – that I was conscious, that I was getting over it and everything was fine, that the prosthetic limb …”
Ihe adversity brought out the genuine affection that his friends fell for him. ”At first, when things were really hard, my friends were always at my side. The sad thing is that my little son Diego will not be able to watch me play football, but I’m fine now and have lots of projects and travel plans for the future,” he says enthusiastically.
After losing a play-off for the 2006 FIFA World Cup to Australia in November 2005, Silva retired from the Uruguayan national team. After the accident he rejected several offers to become a television commentator, but he still closely follows the progress of I a Celesre (“The Light Blues”, Uruguay’s nickname) under Oscar Tabarez. “I like the way Uruguay try to play, with more people up front. Trying to impose themselves on the play. When I played I was sometimes on my own with the nearest team-mate 30 or 40 metres away,’ he recalls. Without over-dramatising, he-analyses Uruguay’s chances in the World Cup qualifiers, in which they have already played four matches. ”Brazil have the edge, hut I don’t know if they’re chat far ahead of the rest … maybe it’s because they haven’t found top gear yet, Argentina are going well, Paraguay are up there … I think that Argentina and Brazil will take first and second place, followed by Paraguay. Chile and Uruguay will most likely be fighting it out for fourth place.” Silva took part in two play-offs against the Australians. The first one, for a place at the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Korea and Japan, ended in smiles, but It was a different story when the sides met again for a place in the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. Therefore, Silva is unperturbed by the question of whether it would be a disaster if Uruguay did not qualify for the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa”: ”Nooo … we’re used to it. It’s hard to believe because we are capable of doing well, but we are used to suffering. Uruguayans are typicaly negative in their outlook, bur there’s still plan of time left, let’s he optimistic.’ he suggests.
He likes the playing style of the current national team: “They are trying to play better. I read a while ago that Uruguayan garra (grit) doesnt exist any more, hut of course it does, it’s in our nature. But football changes, the players change … the Uriiguayans in Europe play differently, then they come over here and we expect them to show garra. Part of that change is in the conception of that word: it no longer means that we have to kick opponents in the teeth.”
Silva talks with a serenity that was never apparent on the pitch, where he had the habit of raising the temperature of games by winding up opposition defenders with his remarks and tireless running. One of his funniest anecdotes dates from when he first arrived in Italy: “I must have been one of the forwards who gave out rhe most kicks in the whole world. It was me who punished the defenders rather than the other way round. I remember a match against AC Milan in 1995, in which Franco Barcsi was playing. I was 22 years old and full of beans … I ran up and down the pitch eighty times a match. At one point Baresi stopped me and said, “Please stop running … were winning 3-0, what are you trying to do?” I used to drive them crazy!”

On 23 September 2006, the Uruguayan striker Dario Silva was in a serious road accident. Miraculously, he survived, and although
part of his right leg had to be amputated, he is optimistic about the future, still involved in sport and dreaming of winning an Olympic medal … in rowing.
Still in a daze, when Dario Silva opened his eyes, he was unable to fully comprehend what had happened to him. He remembered that he had been driving through Montevideo in a pick-up truck with his friends Dardo and Elbio, but the white room in which he had woken up did not hear any resemblance to either of his friends’ houses. He got of bed from the left-hand side and began to put his shoes on, but when the time came to put his right shoe on, his confusion grew. Through the window he saw an ambulance and almost simultaneously he realised that although he could reel it. the lower part of his right leg was missing.
His sister’s tearful embrace brought him back to reality and he began to understand that his footballing career was over, that it was a miracle he had survived and that at 33 – he had to get on with his life.
“I lost that battle … bur when I look back I can’t complain: I played in Italy, Spain and England and scored goals everywhere I went. I also fulfilled my dream of playing at the World Cup,” he says, trying to see the positive side of the situation: “When the accident happened I was at the end of my career. It would have been different if it had happened when I was 20.”
It was a huge blow, but even that failed to deprive him of the cheeriness chat had characterised him during his time at Cagliari, Malaga, Espajnyol and Sevilla, where he left hundreds of friends who were later there to support him after the accident. Once he had understood what had happened, he even allowed himself a joke with the doctots who had saved his life: “You’ve amputated my leg so that I couldn’t sign for Nackmal,” he said with his tradematk grin, a reference to the eternal rivals of Penarol, the club where he first made his name. At the time of the accident, Silva was a free agent after leaving English club Portsmouth and he had been strongly linked with Kacional, a club from Montevideo.

The mythical Stade du 7 Novembre has certainly become the symbol of Tunisian football. It lies at the very heart of the country’s game, a heart that beats so strongly in Rades that the stadium is now the base and preferred ground for the national team who play all of their home games here, irrespective of whether they are facing Italy, Namibia, France, Cote d’lvoire, Latvia or Uruguay.
On 8 October 2005, Rades hosted a re-run of the final of the 2004 Africa Cup of Nations. The second clash between Tunisia and Nigeria was for a place at the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. Same opponents, different stakes. Ihe perfect setting for a football match. On that breathtaking evening in the middle of Ramadan, Roger Lemerre’s lunisian charges went through the whole range of emotions, from pain and suffering to joy and relief. In the end, fortune favoured the Tunisians and a 2-2 draw was enough for the home team to book dieir place in Germany. Rades quickly became known as the “Mecca of Tunisian football”.
Aside from the Tunisian cup final, the highlight of the coumrys domestic football calendar that is always attended by the head of state, the Stade du 7 Novembre has also been the setting for capital-city derbies between Esperanee Sportive de lunis and Club Africain as well as for crucial top-flight matches such as Lsperance v. Htoile du Sahel, Club Africain v. CS Sfaxien. Esperance v. CS Sfaxien and Club Africain v. Stade Tunisien.
The stadium’s design certainly lends itself to a boisterous, festive atmosphere. The spectacle and the noise in the twin tiers help to create a colourful, vivid backdrop that would be worthy of some of European football’s greatest clashes such as Barcelona v. Real Madrid or Roma v. Lazio.
Yer Rades has also been the scene of some of the biggest disappointments in Tunisian football too, most notably when Club Sporcif Sfaxien narrowh – lost to Al Ahly in the final of the GAP Champions League on 11 November 2006.
One thing is for sure, however, and that is that this young stadium already has a history and a legend all of its own. Rades’ Srade du 7 Novembre is well on its way towards emulating celebrated arenas on the other side of the Mediterranean by playing its part in football’s long and glorious history.