I Think Therefore I Play (2 page)

I got on well with everyone and had a normal kind of relationship with Allegri – there was just something in the air. I recognised the walls that over the years had sheltered and protected me, but now I was starting to see cracks. I could sense some kind of draught that was out to make me sick.

That inner urge to go somewhere else, to breathe a different air, became ever more pressing and intense. The poetry that had always surrounded me was now becoming routine. It wasn’t something I could ignore. Even the fans maybe wanted a bit of relief. For so many years they’d applauded me at San Siro of a Sunday (and a Saturday, a Tuesday, a Wednesday…), but now perhaps they wanted to stick new faces in their Panini album, hear new stories being told. They’d got used to the things I did, my movements, my creations. They weren’t awestruck any more. In their eyes, the extraordinary was in real danger of becoming normal.

You can’t be Pirlo any more
. That was a difficult idea to accept. In actual fact, it was deeply unjust. It brought on the start of a sore stomach as I searched in vain for that lost stimulus.

I sat down with Alessandro Nesta: friend, brother, team-mate, roomie. A man with whom I’d shared a thousand adventures, and about as many snacks. At half-time in one of our never-ending football games on the PlayStation, I confessed all. “Sandro, I’m leaving.”

He didn’t seem surprised. “I’m really sorry to hear that. But it’s the right decision.”

After my family, he was the first to find out. I kept him up to speed with everything: step by step, tear by tear. Some weeks were harder than others. A countdown was underway inside of me, but it’s never easy to have to leave a place you know everything about. Including all its secrets.

Milan is a little world apart. One that gave much more than it took and, without a shadow of a doubt, stirred strong feelings in me. Sometimes it was dejection mixed with sadness, other times raw emotion. At any rate, it taught me a valuable life lesson: it’s good to cry. Tears are a visible demonstration of who you are; an undeniable truth. I didn’t hold back. I cried and wasn’t ashamed to do so.

My boarding card wasn’t so much in my hand as in my head. I was like a passenger at the airport a second before they turn round and wave goodbye to family, friends and enemies. Whether it’s a little or a lot, you always leave something behind.

I phoned my agent every day, especially in the period when I was supposed to be recovering from injury, but the desire to really throw myself into it just wasn’t there. Or at least it wasn’t the same as it had been at one time. Massimo Ambrosini and then Mark van Bommel were playing in front of the defence. My house had been broken into – by friends, and not out of badness, but ransacked all the same. I’d been evicted from my much-loved garden, with its patchy grass and bald spots.

“Tullio – any news?”

There always was; and it was always good to excellent. The more ill at ease I felt at Milan, the greater the pull I seemed to exert in the marketplace – a strange rule of football. I was like the X on a treasure trail. Everyone made enquiries, even Inter. Talk about earthquakes in Milan: if that one had come off, it would probably have broken the seismograph.

They rang up Tinti and asked a simple question. “Would Andrea come back here?” Tinti said he’d put it to me. We decided we wouldn’t rule anything out straight away. “Let’s hear what they want,” I said.

Turns out they wanted me. But they were slow. Impressive, certainly, but slow. Before they could get down to serious negotiations, they had to wait and see how the season ended up, who was going to be their coach in the new campaign and what the club’s plans and objectives were going to look like. I was contacted directly just the once. I remember it well: it was a Monday morning and the season had just finished.

“Hi Andrea, it’s Leo.”

On the line was Leonardo, at that point still Inter coach.

“
Ciao
Leo.”

“Listen, everything’s finally sorted. I’ve had the green light from president Moratti. We can begin to talk.”

He told me some great things about Inter; said he felt really energised and in his element there. It could have been a nice challenge – going back to somewhere I’d already been. Returning to the other side after 10 straight years at Milan, nine of them extraordinary. Leonardo could have helped me settle back in, had he not headed off to Paris St Germain and their sheiks a few weeks down the line.

“Andrea, in the new Inter, you’ll have a key role.”

I did think about it, but I wouldn’t have been capable of actually doing it. It would have been too much; an affront that the Milan fans wouldn’t have deserved.

“Thanks Leo, but I can’t. Last night I signed for Juventus.”

I’ll never say which pen I used.

Chapter 2

Discarded. Tossed aside. Thrown on the scrapheap. Or maybe deleted, demolished, defused. Or perhaps even filed away, abandoned, buried. Chucked out.

If certain people at Milan really did want me to end up like that, their plans ran aground. A Titanic in miniature, if you like, with the famous Milanese fog playing the role of the icebergs.

I actually want to thank the people who got their sums so badly wrong. If the calculator hadn’t gone a bit crazy, had the crystal ball that predicts the future not been handled by their overly rough hands, I would never have got to feel like just another guy. A normal person. A six-out-of-10 kind of player.

For a brief period, I was living in a kind of virtual reality. I was the other Andrea Pirlo, the one those people wanted to make out I was. The Pirlo I could have been but instead never became. They treated me like I was nothing special, making me wait with bated breath. In reality, it had the opposite effect, strengthening people’s conviction that I was something more.

As a kid, and then as an adolescent, I tried to rail against a concept conveyed through a few different words: “unique”, “special”, “preordained”. Over time, I learned to live with it and use it to my advantage.

It wasn’t easy for me or for the people who care about me. From an early age, I knew I was a better player than the others, and for that very reason tongues were soon wagging. Everyone talked about me; too much in fact, and not always in a good way. On more than one occasion, my dad, Luigi, had to leave the stand where he was watching and flee to the other side of the pitch, to avoid hearing the nasty comments made by other parents.

He got out of there to avoid reacting, or perhaps to avoid becoming too sad. He had nothing to be ashamed of, and so he ignored them, striding away ever faster, like an Italian Forrest Gump. He’d only stop when he reached a quieter spot that was safer and more sheltered.

Unfortunately not even my mum, Lidia, was spared the angry outbursts.

“Who does that kid think he is? Maradona?”

That’s the line they used most often. Spurred on by their jealousy, they’d say it deliberately loudly, trying to provoke a reaction. They didn’t seem to realise they were actually paying me the biggest compliment. Maradona, for fuck’s sake! It’s like calling a gymnast Jury Chechi, a basketball player Michael Jordan, or a top model Naomi Campbell. It’s like calling Silvio Berlusconi a giant.

By definition it was an unfair fight: adults picking on a little kid. Just plain wrong. The only way I could defend myself was by doing things that would amaze. Precisely what they were accusing me of in the first place.

I bore the mark of a non-existent sin, but was protected by an invisible suit of armour. One that every so often couldn’t prevent the odd lunging knife or poisoned arrow slipping through. A whole bunch of them hit me one afternoon when I was 14 and playing for the Brescia youths. I say playing for them, but in actual fact they were playing against me.

“Pass me the ball.”

Silence.

Strange: I’d shouted it loudly, and my Italian was pretty good.

“Guys, pass me the ball.”

Still nothing. A silence so deafening that I could hear my words echoing around.

“Is something going on here?”

Silence again. Everyone making out they were deaf.

Nobody would pass me the ball. My team-mates were playing amongst themselves, leaving me out completely. I was there but they couldn’t see me. Or better, they
could
see me, but chose to pretend I wasn’t there. They were treating me like some kind of leper, just because I was better than them at football.

I flitted about like a ghost, dying on the inside. There was a mutiny taking place against me. They wouldn’t even talk to me, wouldn’t even look in my direction. Absolutely nothing.

“Are you going to give me the ball or not?”

Silence.

I blew up and burst out crying. Right there on the pitch, in front of 21 opponents. Eleven on the other team, and 10 supposedly on mine. Once I started I just couldn’t stop. I ran and cried. I sprinted and cried. I stood still and cried. I was completely dejected and depressed. Most of all, I was an adolescent. And that sort of thing shouldn’t happen to someone so young. At that age, you should be scoring goals and celebrating. But the fact that I scored so many upset a lot of people.

It was in that precise moment that my career, still in its formative stages, took a turn down the right path. I had a choice: get pissed off and stop, or get pissed off and keep playing. Playing
my
way. The second option struck me as more intelligent, and something I could work on straight away.

Off I went and gathered the ball. Once, twice, a hundred times. Me against the rest of the world. I was like some kind of noble crusader. Nobody wanted to play with me? Fine then; I’d be my own team. It wasn’t like I didn’t have the weaponry. Ten of them would struggle to score, but I’d manage it all on my own. I’d dribble past every last one of them, including the kids wearing the same colour of shirt as me.

They’d all got it so wrong: I didn’t have the slightest intention of behaving like a superstar. The truth is a lot simpler: that’s just how I was made. I was acting on pure instinct, not riding a flight of fancy. I’d spy a pass, the chance to bring out a trick or an opportunity to score and it was already done. I’d outpace even myself, especially when it came to thinking.

Even in those early days I was someone who always had to deliver; always had to maintain high standards. For everyone else, it was okay to have an average game. If I did, it was a failure.

Right from the start, they said I always seemed tired, as if I couldn’t go on. Truth is they were taken in by the way I moved around the pitch. I looked like I was idling, always taking small steps. Small steps for me, giant leaps for mankind. Or something like that.

Venting my emotions out on the pitch all those years ago was like releasing a coiled spring. If there are too many people around, I’ll tend not to speak all that much. I’ll get worked up, for good or bad, without letting on. But that afternoon it was a different story.

I conducted a long and silent discussion with my inner self. Looking back, it bordered on madness:

Even today, I’m not completely convinced I’m unique or irreplaceable. But I struggle to explain that to people who are used to making superficial judgments about me. I have reached one conclusion, though. I think I’ve understood that there is a secret: I perceive the game in a different way. It’s a question of viewpoints, of having a wide field of vision. Being able to see the bigger picture.

Your classic midfielder looks downfield and sees the forwards. I’ll focus instead on the space between me and them where I can work the ball through. It’s more a question of geometry than tactics. The space seems bigger to me. It looks easier to get in behind – a wall that can easily be knocked down.

People have compared me to Gianni Rivera,
⁴
saying that side of my game reminds them of him. I’ve never seen him play, not even on video, so I can’t say whether they’re right or wrong. I’ve never looked at another player, past or present, and thought they were similar to me. I suppose there’s always time, but I’m not on the lookout for clones; it’s not something that interests me. After all, Dolly won’t ever be the same as the other sheep.

I don’t feel pressure, either. 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.

From a mental point of view, my not entirely inadvertent tutor was Mircea Lucescu, the coach who plucked me from the Brescia youths aged 15 and put me straight into the big boys’ world of the first team. I found myself training with 30-somethings who were a little bit put out at me getting under their feet. They were twice as old as me and, some days, twice as nasty.

“Andrea, keep playing like you did in the youth team.”

That was the first phrase Lucescu whispered to me and, like a good little soldier, I obeyed. Not everyone took it well, especially the senior players in the dressing room. They were among the most listened to and respected out on the pitch, and were like old men compared to me.

One day I took the ball past one of them three times in a row. The fourth time was fatal. He committed the worst foul of all time, carrying out a premeditated assault on my ankle. There was no point trying to make out he hadn’t meant it – nobody would have believed him.