Spain's La Roja star and Man City playmaker David Silva has taken time out ahead of Sunday's Manchester derby at the Etihad to reveal how his son Mateo struggled for his life.
According to The Mirror citing Daily Mail, Mateo arrived prematurely five months earlier in December 2017, and had to remain in the intensive care unit at the Casa de Salud hospital.
But his father Silva held on as he shuttled between Spain's games and Manchester City EPL fixtures as the Citizens emerged Premier League champions.
The Spaniard insists winning the league silverware was nice, but that will not replace the sadness seeing, his son struggling for survival.
"Everyone has an image of a premature child but until you live it and experience it, you just don't know how bad it is.
It was obviously the toughest, most difficult period of my life. What's going on in your private life and then trying to combine that with your working life," Silva was quoted as saying by Daily Mail.
"Football was the thing that helped me the most. For that time I was out on the field, those 90 minutes, that was the only way, the only time I could forget stuff.
"For that short time, you'd enjoy the game for what it was but then, as soon as that is over, you're back to thinking about everything again," he noted, even as he gets set to celebrate Mateo's first birthday next month.
However, Silva is optimistic Man city will hold their own against Jose Mourinho's Manchester United in Sunday's derby.
"The balance in power has shifted.
"When I first got here, there was that huge respect for Manchester United, and now I think it is a little bit more the other way around," noted Silva, who arrived Etihad in 2010 from La Liga side, Valencia.
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