It's a grievous shame that true genius is hardly ever recognized in its time. The public is always behind. Habitually tardy. The creator and/or his works are dismissed or overlooked at first -- discarded due to ignorance and childish arrogance. Diamonds are thrown away because the scavenger takes them for ordinary stones. A treasure in the trash with pebbles. Here, we have one of the brightest in Andrea Pirlo, who in the tail end of his career has become a cult hero, sadly when his genius is not as luminous as it once was.
In remembrance of the fully featured version of Andrea Pirlo
Well before casual English and American followers of Serie A started to notice his brilliance, Andrea Pirlo was one of the best players in the world. He heads to New York City FC a widely revered shell of a footballer.
Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images
Before Pirlo was a luxury player -- before the beard, the wine and the fetishization that comes with being discovered by English fans (you're not good unless they acknowledge you as such) -- he was the Geppetto of AC Milan.
Consider his performance against Juventus on Jan. 10, 2010. Pirlo was in his prime at 30 years old, an age wasted on a Milan side littered with has-beens and false hopes -- Alexandre Pato, Mancini, Dida, Marco Borriello and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar to name a few. All was lost before the season even began. Paolo Maldini's retirement was a testament to that notion. Indentured with Kaka's move to Real Madrid and Carlo Ancelotti leaving for Chelsea and it was as if Milan had lost its spirit in one short and bitter summer.
That season was forgettable but the match, a 3-0 away victory, was not -- and Pirlo's mesmerizing act especially. He started in his deep playmaking role in midfield next to the ever-brazen Rino Gattuso, while being tasked with pampering Ronaldinho and Clarence Seedorf, two respective stars who hardly resembled their younger selves. As if Pirlo was seeing his own foreshadowed fate whenever he raised his head to supply a pass to either.
One of the biggest differences between the Pirlo of the now and that time is highlighted in his first few actions in the game: tackles and interceptions. He’s not prancing about the field lazily, waiting to receive the ball and play his signature passes; instead, he’s sprinting toward attackers, stealing passes, stopping runs, going shoulder to shoulder with rivals. Putting his body on the line, a concept so far-fetched and foreign these days.
The match is then a display of all of his skills: receiving the ball from defenders so deep that it resembles how Xabi Alonso operates at Bayern today. Spraying passes side to side with either foot, playing them over the top of the defense for the quicksilver Pato, but there’s also an exceptional drive --an attribute that made him much more deadly in his younger days. He could dribble. He could push the ball beyond defenders.
In several instances, a defender would sprint to defend him as he receives a pass before coming to his senses and stopping midway, leaving a noticeable amount of space between the two of them. There would then be a momentarily lull in time as both the defender and Pirlo would be facing each other, static, as Pirlo looks around for a pass and the defender is caught in two minds about trying to engage or just shielding as to not allow him to penetrate through the middle.
Hardly 30 minutes into the match and Pirlo’s beating two men before firing a long-range shot that goes wide. Two minutes later and he’s leaving a defender crumpled on the floor with a deft touch as he receives the ball before firing another rocket toward goal. Then there’s the skill that Xavi had become known for and is a necessary weapon for the operators of the engine room: running to the ball with a defender on his back, he slows down and lets the ball run across his body to his left foot. Then as the defender gets really tight, he takes a hard touch with the weak foot across his body before exploding upward, away from the pressure.
His victim is then left stuttering his feet to gain traction for such a sudden change of direction and to try to regain his balance or otherwise embarrass himself by falling.
Pirlo was never physically dominant, but he compensated for that failing with his cerebral play. He was always the smartest man on the pitch. Playing passing lanes and pouncing on loose touches to recover possession; embodying the doctrine of pass and move like few others ever could and having such a vast array of talents that he could be dangerous from his team’s defensive third to the opponent’s box. One 60-yard pass could lead to a goal, and so could his free kicks and strikes from outside the 18.
He was control personified. Even in moments of intense pressure, he had already calculated how to escape it and the two moves beyond that. That is not to say that he didn’t have his weaknesses: the failures of the body are hard to hide in a 90-minute game and his Hollywood passes are a sin to be lived with. But he was remarkable. This was Pirlo at the height of his powers. Clean-shaven, full of luscious hair and bursting with life. Fully developed and accomplished. A world champion who still surprised and befuddled with the slightest of touches and feints.
Now as he seems destined to depart to New York City FC for a new adventure and his swan song, he's become more of a caricature of himself than the real thing. He needs more than the one destroyer next to him in midfield as his legs have lost their strength. The dribbling is gone, the movement has waned and he's now in a sense the art of a higher society, in that he's more admired for what he represents than any usefulness.
But before he became the bearded Mona Lisa, he was a gentle terror at Milan and in his early days at Juventus. This marks an end to the high-level career of one of the most influential midfielders of our time. A conductor that turned the deep playmaking role into an art form before he inevitably became the decoration on the wall himself.
See More:
