“When Andrea told me that he was joining us, the first thing I thought was: ‘God exists.’ He allows you to dream when he has the ball at his feet,” remarked Gianluigi Buffon not long after the floppy-haired maestro joined Juventus in 2011.
After 10 years of elegant service at the heart of the Milan midfield, the then-32-year-old had been discarded by the Rossoneri. Offered a token gesture contract extension that was thinly disguised as an attempt to tell Pirlo that ‘we wish you all the best in your future endeavours, but if you want to stay, you have to do it on our terms’, Pirlo, rightly, didn’t take too kindly to Milan’s proposal, and decided to be the latest in a long string of players to play for all of the ‘big three’ and join Juve in the summer of 2011, signing a three-year deal.
In his final season at Milan, Pirlo had been relegated to the bench in favour of the more rugged Mark van Bommel by then-Milan coach Max Allegri. While Van Bommel was a good midfielder and possessed characteristics Pirlo lacked, such effrontery did not sit well with him. Even though Milan won the Scudetto in 2010-11 and Pirlo’s role in the success wasn’t as pivotal as in previous years, he was ready to teach Milan a lesson.
“I didn’t think that after leaving Milan I had begun a downward slope of my career. I was convinced that I was still a top player, so I joined Juventus with great motivation,” he said in 2017.
What followed was one of the greatest 12 months by an Italian footballer in recent memory.
Pirlo set the tone for what was to come on his Juventus debut against Parma in early September. It was Juve’s first competitive game in the brand new Juventus Stadium, and as the sun glistened on a glorious Sunday afternoon in Turin in early September, Pirlo took centre stage.
Parma, who’d done the double over Juve the previous season, were taken to pieces, beaten 4-1 in what was a statement of intent. Pirlo created two assists that day. The first was a wonderful run-stop-swivel-and-through ball into the path of right-back Stephan Lichtsteiner in what was the first goal scored in an official game in the new arena. The second was a quintessential Pirlo assist: a lofted through ball over the top of the now-beleaguered Parma back line in the direction of the onrushing Claudio Marchisio, who met Pirlo’s pass with an exquisite lobbed touch of his own to put the seal on what had been a dominant Juve performance.
Now in a three-man midfield with dynamic runners in the shape of Arturo Vidal and Marchisio, not to mention the rampaging Lichtsteiner at right-back, Pirlo flourished in his new surroundings. Able to ping balls in every direction, he was the calming influence in a high-octane side that was arguably the most entertaining of Antonio Conte’s teams during his three-year stint at Juve.
Pirlo finished the season with 13 assists, and some of them were exceptional: the diagonal switch for Lichtsteiner against Atalanta in Bergamo; the stop-and-swivel for Simone Pepe against Lazio; the laser-like pass for Mirko Vucinic against Bologna, and another floated over-the-top pass for Marchisio against Lecce all spring to mind.
He also weighed in with goals, three of them, the most he’d scored in a single season for four years. Many ingredients made up Juve’s first Scudetto win in six years: the return of Conte as manager, the new stadium, important buys such as Vidal and Lichtsteiner, the development of Leonardo Bonucci, but the most important element was Pirlo. Without him, Juve wouldn’t have got close to winning the league against a Milan side that was far superior individually.
But as the 2011-12 season passed into history, Pirlo was leaving his greatest work to last: Euro 20212 with Italy.
Gli Azzurri had breezed through qualifying under Cesare Prandelli, as the former Fiorentina coach picked up the shattered pieces of the national side’s reputation in the aftermath of their meek defence of the World Cup. Marcello Lippi’s blindspot for the old guard that helped him win the trophy in 2006 came back to haunt him as Italy finished bottom – yes bottom – in a group that contained Paraguay, New Zealand and Slovakia in South Africa.
Prandelli took over and instilled an enterprising side that included the likes of Antonio Cassano, Mario Balotelli, Antonio Di Natale, and of course centered around Pirlo. Drawn in a group with Spain, Republic of Ireland and Croatia, Italy had arguably landed in the toughest group of the Euros.
In the group opener in Gdansk, Italy and Pirlo produced a stellar performance against Spain in a brilliant 1-1 draw. Italy scored first, after Pirlo danced past Sergio Busquets and slipped in Di Natale, who bent his shot around Ilker Casillas. The lead didn’t last long as Cesc Fabregas equalised, but it had been Italy’s best performance at a major international tournament since 2006.
A trademark free kick against Croatia in Poznan followed and with Italy needing a win against Ireland in the final game to seal qualification, they managed it thanks to goals from rascal duo Cassano and Balotelli, with the former’s headed goal coming from Pirlo’s corner.
And then came that quarter final meeting with England.
For 120 minutes, Pirlo produced a master class in ball retention and how to orchestrate a football match at the very highest level. England hadn’t been dominated by such a dominant individual performance in a major international tournament since Marco van Basten at Euro ‘88.
England coach Roy Hodgson, who had coached Pirlo very briefly at Inter towards the back end of the 1998/99 season, instructed Wayne Rooney and Danny Wellbeck to deny Pirlo time and space on the ball. Wellbeck barely tried, and Rooney stopped after the opening minutes. Pirlo was given the freedom of Kiev to cause all the havoc he wanted, and the fact that the game ended goalless was down to dreadful awful finishing from the men in blue.
Pirlo finished the game with 131 passes, more than England’s entire midfield combined. It was the second most by any individual in the history of the competition. Ashley Cole was England’s best passer on the night, with 44.
With the passing of time and hindsight, the England match has gone down as one of Pirlo’s most career-defining games, one that finally opened British viewers and pundits eyes to his languid genius.
Then came penalties.
Balotelli scored; Steven Gerrard scored; Riccardo Montolivo dragged his shot wide; Rooney smashed in his penalty. The score was 2-1 to England before Pirlo carried the ball to the penalty spot.
We know what comes next.
Joe Hart proceeded to perform a poor-man’s rendition of Bruce Grobbelaar’s 1984 tactics for Liverpool against Roma in the European Cup final in an attempt to put Pirlo off. Hart went through the whole routine – arms flailing, grunting and jumping around like a teenager on a MDMA trip in a late 1980s London disco – yet Pirlo was the complete opposite. Whatever he was thinking about Hart’s antics, he wasn’t selling it to the outside world.
“I saw Hart was practically down on the ground already, so I tried it,” Pirlo said after the match. “I didn’t think about what would happen if I’d got it wrong, it was just a spontaneous thing.
“Hart looked very confident in himself, so I thought we had to bring him down a peg or two.”
And how did he ever. Pirlo’s slow-motion, picture perfect Panenka is arguably the greatest seen on the biggest stage since Francesco Totti’s against The Netherlands at Euro 2000. The ball seemed to float in the air for an age, before gently dropping down behind the goal line, with Hart nowhere near the ball. The execution was flawless.
Hart was never quite the same goalkeeper again, his confidence seemingly zapped by Pirlo’s very public emasculation. England, meanwhile, didn’t score again in the penalty shootout. Ashley Young, who was next to follow Pirlo, smashed his effort against the crossbar. Antonio Nocerino scored; Buffon saved Ashley Cole’s tame penalty, and Alessandro Diamanti planted home the winning penalty to ensure Italy reached the final four and a date with Germany.
Pirlo’s moment of audacious deftness shifted the trajectory of the shootout, and England subsequently wilted under the pressure.
Against Germany in the semi final, Pirlo was again majestic. He kept Italy ticking over, and such was the fear generated by his performance against England, Joachim Low ordered his players to push up on Pirlo, which in turn left space in behind. Balotelli ruthlessly exploited this for his second of the game, as he latched on to Montolivo’s long through ball to rifle it – in the greatest sense of the word – into the top corner of Manuel Neuer’s goal.
Pirlo’s measured and controlled performance in the middle of the park was in stark contrast to Germany’s, and for the third consecutive game he picked up the man of the match award.
The final was one step too far for Pirlo and Italy, as they met Spain once again in the showpiece event in Kiev. They were demolished 4-0 in what was arguably the finest iteration of the Spanish domination of international football at the end of the 2000s and into the 2010s.
Pirlo was pipped for Player of the Tournament by Andres Iniesta, with Spain’s victory ultimately – and somewhat unfairly – deciding the outcome of the award.
Following the tournament, Pirlo’s reputation was never higher, despite being an integral cog in Italy’s 2006 World Cup success and Milan’s two Champions League wins. This was especially the case in the insular British footballing consciousness, which had slept on Pirlo for years and where players generally tend to get overlooked unless they do well against England or English sides in Europe.
For a couple of years, the cult of Pirlo took over. And this was only exacerbated when he decided to grow his beard out and look the textbook definition of a hipster at the start of the 2012/13 season.
Yet underneath the luscious hair, groomed beard, flannel shirts and glasses of wine, the simple fact was that Pirlo had played the best football of his career in those 12 months. He’d led Juve to their first title in six years (nine if you discount the two stripped because of Calciopoli) and had taken Italy to the final of Euro 2012. He’d gone from a forgotten, bit-part player with Milan to one of the most talked about players in the world in the space of 12 months, and all in his mid-30s.
His point well and truly proved to Milan, and made Buffon believe in God.