He has a solution for that. No. “Perhaps I’d have done even higher,” he said, with a smile. His logic is predicated on greater than unflappable self-confidence. “It was somewhat more technical after I was playing,” he said. “Now perhaps it’s more physical. But there have been numerous players in my generation, numerous teams with technical players of the very best level.
“Perhaps now there aren’t quite so many, so a little bit of quality goes a great distance. It might be just as beneficial on this kind of soccer, perhaps more so. Those sorts of players, those who’re somewhat smarter, or somewhat more technical, are harder to seek out now. In all that speed, all that haste, there are particular situations where an important thing is somewhat intelligence, somewhat technique.”
Besides, Pirlo is adamant that certain truths about soccer hold, no matter how the sport’s fashions, its tastes, ebb and flow. He might watch it now with a manager’s eye, scouring what he sees for some strategic insight, some tactical maneuver, but he stays a player at heart. “You’ve got to work inside systems now greater than you probably did,” he said. “But it surely at all times comes all the way down to the players.” A coach, he knows from personal experience, is rarely in complete control of events. Even the best strategies, essentially the most complex schemes, hinge on the humans tasked with implementing them.
“All the things can change,” he said. “It could actually be quicker or slower, it may possibly have one style or one other, but it surely is at all times the players that make things occur on the sector.”
In that, to Pirlo, it at all times stays the identical, familiar, recognizable, as appealing because it has at all times been. “You’ll be able to ask if it was more beautiful before, or more beautiful now,” he said. “But it surely is at all times beautiful.”
