Ligue1.com has the scoop…

1) It nearly never happened at all

Now the captain of PSG and Brazil and with more than 500 career appearances under his belt for club and country, it may seem unfathomable now, but Silva nearly quit the game when he was 21.

His path into professional football had already been fraught. A defensive midfielder in his youth, Silva was released by Fluminense at 15 and failed subsequent trials and Flamengo and Botafogo among others before getting back on track at lower league Barcelona.

Having worked his way up to top-flight football with Juventude, he later joined a post-Jose Mourinho Porto in 2004. Silva initially struggled with the pace of the game in Portugal but a subsequent loan at Dynamo Moscow revealed that he had in fact been battling tuberculosis.

Silva returned to his native Rio de Janeiro in 2005 and told his mother Angela he was quitting. "I had to remind him there weren't many good jobs around for a boy from the reality we lived in," she told The Guardian in 2014. "That seemed to put him back on course."

The rest, as they say, is history.

Watch: Silva's incredible disallowed goal against OGC Nice in 2013

2) Flying with Fluminense

Silva got his career back on track with his first club, Fluminense. Former Juventude coach Ivo Wortmann had taken the top job at the Maracana Stadium and insisted on bringing a young Silva with him, despite the recent health issues.

In his three seasons with the Tricolor between 2006 and 2009, Silva lifted the Copa do Brasil, got to the final of the Copa Libertadores, racked up more than 100 games for the club and first forced his way into Dunga's Brazil squad.

By the time he left for AC Milan, Thiago-mania had swept Rio, and young fans could be seen sporting the now-customary white bandage Silva wears on his left wrist.

"I started wearing it in late 2006 out of necessity after an injury," he explained to Globo Esporte in 2008. "But I did well in the next game and thought it was beautiful. It gave me luck, and now I know there are fans wearing a wristband because of me I don't take it off any more."

3) Making it with Milan

Silva's second stab at European football went significantly better than his first. AC Milan signed him from Fluminense in 2009 and fellow centre-back Alessandro Nesta - in the eighth of his 10 seasons with the club - said Silva's presence would extend his career at the top.

A Serie A and Supercoppa Italiana double in 2011 later and Silva was made Milan captain, becoming the first non-Italian to lead the Rossoneri out since Swedish attacker Nils Liedholm some 50 years earlier.

Italy may have invented Catenaccio, but by the time Silva left for PSG he had won praise from a litany of Italian defensive legends, from Franco Baresi to Paolo Maldini.

"It's difficult to identify where he can improve; he's already proven to have everything," said the former. "In Italy we had a great tradition for defenders," explained the latter. "But I believed Thiago Silva is the best in the world right now."

4) The cleanest in the business?

But what exactly is it that prompted PSG to reportedly make Silva the most expensive defender in the world, prior to Virgil van Dijk's move to Liverpool from Southampton in 2018?

Silva's pace, positioning and reading of the game make him an incredible defender, and if you want proof beyond the 20 trophies he has won with Paris, a closer look at his card record shines further light.

Silva hardly ever gets booked. In that double-winning season with Milan in 2010/11 he picked up a single yellow card; in his first season with PSG two years later, Silva only committed 14 fouls.

Fleet of foot and thought, Silva almost never needs to correct a mistake, snuffing out danger before it becomes a problem. Zlatan Ibrahimovic - Silva's long-time friend and teammate at Milan and PSG - reportedly ensured that Silva had made the move to the French capital before following suit in 2012.

The above is some of the reason why.

5) A PSG legend

A hero at Fluminense and Milan - as well as a FIFA Confederations Cup and Copa America winner with Brazil - Silva has now undoubtedly had the best of his career at PSG.

Only Bosnian 1980s legend Safet Susic (344) and modern-day Italian teammate Marco Verratti (311) have more appearances for the capital club than Silva (310) among foreign-born players; and Silva doesn't figure to leave anytime soon, having become legally French last March.

"Today [we] became French citizens," Silva posted on his Twitter. "It's a very happy day for us because it's already been six-and-a-half years that we've been in Paris and we really feel at home here."

Silva's continued presence would be more than welcomed by those that care about the club, too.

"He's the [Lionel] Messi of defenders," former PSG and France defender Alain Roche told FourFourTwo. "The question is no longer if he is the best defender in the world, because he's quite simply one of the best players in the world - better than [Fabio] Cannavaro when he won the Ballon d'Or."