The image of Andrea Pirlo did a disservice to Pirlo the player

By the time Andrea Pirlo went to the United States to play for New York City FC, he had stopped being Pirlo the player and had become Pirlo the idea. He was the image and thought of the artist more than the artist himself. At the end of his time in MLS — after his last game where he was brought on as a 90th-minute sub to try and help his team find a goal against Columbus Crew — he had ceased being much of either. The mystique of both Pirlo and the idea of Pirlo faded as he spent his last year doing much of nothing on the bench.

Against Germany, in the semifinals of the 2006 World Cup, Pirlo carved open the defense with a pass that found an unmarked Fabio Grosso right when the game seemed destined for penalties. The assist was Pirlo himself, distilled into the purest possible moment.

It came in a tournament where he won the most man of the match awards, including in the final where Italy beat France. In that final, Pirlo scored the first penalty after extra time, which was fitting for a man who once claimed that he doesn’t feel pressure:

“I don’t feel pressure … I don’t give a toss about it. I spent the afternoon of Sunday, 9 July, 2006 in Berlin sleeping and playing the PlayStation. In the evening, I went out and won the World Cup.”

What I like so much about the assist to Fabio Grosso is that like Pirlo himself, it arrived a little late and it’s not as perfect as it’s made to seem. If you watch the play, you’ll notice that when the ball comes out to Pirlo from the corner, and he touches it with his left foot, then settles it with his right, that he could have passed the ball to Grosso at that moment right after his second touch. There was a huge space between the two defenders who came out to close him down. If he had made the pass at that moment, it would have been in front of Grosso who could have stepped into the shot.

Instead, Pirlo did a fake shot before dribbling the ball further away from goal, to another gap between the middle defender and the one at the edge of the box. Then he passed it. It meant that Grosso had to shadow him, and when the pass came, the forward had to take a quick step backwards before coming into the shot. It came late, but it’s a perfect pass because Grosso made it so with the goal, but that’s the nature of playmakers and assists.

Pirlo came on late because it took two loans and three years at Inter before he found his niche. He was on the verge of being another great talent unsuited for the bigger teams until he signed for Milan. He had been tried in the attacking, central, and deep-lying midfielder roles, the last successfully when he was loaned to Brescia, before Carlo Ancelotti decided that his permanent position should be in front of the defense.

Ancelotti understood Pirlo’s limits that eventually became distorted into a representation of his “coolness.” His faults became his celebrated image. Pirlo was and has always been a liability if he didn’t have the ball. He’s a luxury that you have to be able to afford. When the team can afford him, he makes the game easier for his teammates and a thing of beauty for audiences to watch. If the team can’t, it’s as if the team is playing a man down.

The way to mitigate that is to have two mobile midfielders playing in front of him. At Milan, he had Rino Gattuso and Clarence Seedorf, and then Gattuso and Massimo Ambrosini. Sometimes, like in the 2007 Champions League Final, all three were in front of him. Gattuso did the same job in the Italian team in 2006, with Simone Perrotta and Mauro Camoranesi by his side. Daniele De Rossi and Claudio Marchisio were excellent at it in the 2012 European Championships. Marchisio, Arturo Vidal, and Paul Pogba compensated for him at Juventus.

Pirlo is a highly specialized player that changes the complexion of a team, because the objective of the midfield has to be in protecting and compensating for him, and these conditions have to be met for him to be at his best.

It sounds like a lot to compromise for one player, and it is, but it’s also a reciprocal relationship. Pirlo gives structure and calm to a team. He makes players around him better because he controls the game. He’s always in space and he knows and can make the right pass, to the right person, at the right angle, with the necessary weight for the other player to perform at their best. If you’re a forward or attacking midfielder, he can help you beat a defender or the entire defense by where he puts the ball. It’s why him and Pippo Inzaghi had such a great relationship. If you’re a defender, he helps to relieve pressure and create angles to get the ball forward. As long as you have Pirlo, everything is alright, but you have to make sure that Pirlo is alright first.

This symbiotic relationship won Italy a World Cup where Pirlo was one of the best players of the tournament. It took Italy to the final of Euro 2012, where he had two of his best games ever in the knockout stage matches against England and Germany. It won Milan a league title and two Champions Leagues. It won Juventus a few league titles and took them to the Champions League Final. Pirlo was named to the squad of the tournament that year at 36 years old.

When he went to New York, the conditions that had to be met had grown too great at his advanced age, and were too much in a frantic league. So he became the idea of Pirlo. His faults became his image. His sauntering around and static play was turned into an argument against America and its love for physicality over brains, rather than being seen as a natural consequence of age and who Pirlo has always been. He was never defensive, but he couldn’t even move to create space as he used to. So his clothes, vineyards, and off-the-field attitude — the idea of him — was focused on over what he did on the field, because he couldn’t really do anything on the field anymore. The Pirlo of New York was a celebration of the Pirlo of the past.

Yet the image of the high-brow Pirlo does a disservice to how simple, confident, and straightforward he’s always been. He’s a thinker but without the pretentiousness that he’s been given in his late career. After he led Juventus to its third league title in a row, he was asked how much his life had changed from 20 years ago, when he was still being sent out on loan. He said: “For me it has always been the same. Nothing has changed. I stay at home, I play, I train, I go home. That’s it.”

The only thing that changed about Pirlo was that he got older and rather than only being compensated for on the field, an image was created to explain what was his decline. It was unnecessary. The player has always been the same. A savant of the art of passing the ball and the movements and awareness that accompany that.

Teams had to create an environment to allow Pirlo to exist and, in turn, he allowed everyone else around him to reach their full potential. He depended on the system and the system depended on him. When he couldn’t do his part, mostly because of age, he was surplus to requirements just like everyone else. But when he was at his best — which means the team was also at its best — whether it was Brescia, Milan, Juventus, or Italy, he was one of the most beautiful players to watch.