Where ex-Leeds United star Marco Silvestri is playing may now surprise you | OneFootball

Marco Silvestri has reunited in Italy with ex-Leeds owner Andrea Radrizzani, with both now at Italian sleeping giant Sampdoria.

Leeds United have had plenty of players play for the club with varying degrees of success at Elland Road.

Leeds did enjoy some recent history and players in the Premier League, under Marcelo Bielsa's tutelage, and would finish ninth upon their returning season to the top-flight after 16 years away.

However, the majority of their recent history has come in the EFL, which has seen some extraordinary signings in that time, especially during the most chaotic years of the club's existence.

They remain in the Championship in 2024/25 after narrowly missing out on promotion last term; but today we are looking back through time, where many players have passed through the door for Leeds in the second tier in particular.

Here, we take a look at the career path of a former Leeds player whose current club in 2024 may now surprise you.

Marco Silvestri's Leeds career

Few players from the Massimo Cellino era managed to leave Leeds and make an impact elsewhere, but Marco Silvestri has become one of the rare exceptions.

The 2013/14 season saw Leeds secure their place in the Championship, largely thanks to Ross McCormack’s goals. McCormack was then sold to Fulham for around £11 million in the summer and the funds from his sale helped finance no fewer than 15 signings that summer.

Most of the recruits came from Italy's Serie A, B, and C, rather than the domestic market. Few of these players left with a positive reputation, with the long-term standout being current club captain Liam Cooper. He was joined that summer by Maro Silvestri.

He was number one for the first two seasons of his Leeds stint. However, his low point came on April 18th 2015. Silvestri was one of six Cellino signings (along with Mirco Antenucci, Giuseppe Bellusci, Souleymane Doukara, Dario Del Fabro, and Edgar Cani) who controversially pulled out of the squad with an 'injury'.

That was the day before a 2-1 loss against Charlton Athletic and they became known as part of the 'sicknote six'. Silvestri being part of that infamous group during the final weeks of that 2014/15 season, meant his reputation at the club was near enough impossible to rescue.

There were conflicting reports at the time about whether the players were actually hurt or staging a protest against the club and Neil Redfearn but the chaos that ensued surrounding the episode was typical of the tenure of Cellino as the Leeds chairman.

Silvestri would somewhat recover from that, amongst some others, but it was always going to leave a sour taste for plenty of supporters. He protested his innocence, claiming a back injury was what had been keeping him out of action.

After losing his shirt to Rob Green in 2016/17, he would spend one final season at Elland Road as his understudy before returning to Italy with Hellas Verona in 2017 for an undisclosed fee.

Marco Silvestri joins Andrea Radrizzani in Italy

Silvestri has gone on to build a reputation for himself as one of the best shot-saving goalkeepers in Serie A in recent years, even if there have been similar question marks surrounding his all-round goalkeeping abilities as to what held him back with Leeds.

He initially signed as the deputy goalkeeper but established himself as first-choice after relegation to the second tier. After a stellar season in Serie B, Silvestri did not look back, featuring in 70 games in all competitions in the next two seasons and earning yet another move.

At Udinese, where he recently played in Serie A, he enjoyed two highly successful seasons as number one during the first few campaigns with the club, albeit he was used in rotation with Maduka Okoye during the latter half of the campaign.

He may never have been capped for Italy but he has gained international recognition with call-ups to various squads in recent years. The first of which came on October 2nd 2020 following his impressive displays with Verona. Not many Leeds fans would have envisaged that during his inconsistent years at the club during the Cellino era.

Now, in the most recent transfer window, he signed a one-year deal with Sampdoria, meaning he has moved back to Serie B and to one of Italian football's sleeping giants, who finished seventh last season. There, he competes alongside Paolo Vismara and Simone Ghidotti, where the former and Silvestri have largely shared the minutes this term.

Perhaps even more interestingly is that he has now reunited with Andrea Radrizzani. Silvestri was signed by Leeds during Cellino's era of the club, but there was some overlap with Radrizzani when he became a minority shareholder during the final stages of Silvestri's Leeds career.

Radrizzani bought Sampdoria after selling Leeds in the summer of 2023. The pair are aiming to secure promotion together, but things have not transpired that way so far in 2024/25. Their miserable reunion has them finding themselves in a battle to survive, sitting 15th after 17 matches thus far.