Andrea Pirlo must come with a health warning — highly injurious to rival defences and goalkeepers. Joe Hart would agree, flummoxed by the floaters let loose by the long-haired Flero-native’s set-piece skulduggery. The sphere seemed to spring into life all its own when deployed from dead-ball situations.
Pirlo (pronounced peer-low) seems peerless when marshalling the midfield, his passing so precise, as if he had an aerial view of the complete field of play.
Now wreathed with a beard, his gaunt face is no map to his mind. It gives little away, much like the dummy he sold the English defence, making way for his mate Marchisio to shoot at sight.
The sight of the leonine maestro, mane in full flow, yet never clouding his vision, evokes awe if not dread.
“You try to keep Pirlo in check but a player of that quality will always find a way around it,” said England coach Roy Hodgson.
Paul Scholes’s prediction would prove prophetic: Pirlo is the world’s greatest playmaker. Give him time and he’ll destroy you.
With captain Gianluigi Buffon injured for the Azzuri’s opening match against England, Italy’s No. 21 didn’t need to bark orders to his troops. “Pirlo is a silent leader. He speaks with his feet,” said Marcello Lippi, coach of Italy’s 2006 World Cup winning squad.
Man-of-the-match in that final against France, Pirlo’s biography titled Penso Quindi Gioco , which translates to ‘I think, therefore I play’ has an interesting take on pressure: “I don’t give a toss about it. I spent the afternoon of Sunday, July 9, 2006 in Berlin sleeping and playing the PlayStation. In the evening I went out and won the World Cup.”
When asked by the BBC whether there was a change in his mindset from 2006, Pirlo replied, “my mentality is still exactly the same. It is that wanting to win and push myself to the very end. A few years have gone by now but the will to do well remains the same.”
Pirlo is proprietor of the Pratum Coller (Latin for meadow hill) vinery near Brescia in the Lombardy region. Each year it sells between 15-20,000 bottles of red rose and white wine. Promoted mostly online, he hopes to market the produce better when he hangs up his boots. But for now, like wine, Pirlo seems to be only getting better with age.
