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Andrea Pirlo's Beautiful Game

Andrea Pirlo is not just one of soccer's most incisive playmakers—he's a proponent for a specific soccer worldview. Is Major League Soccer ready to hear his gospel?
Photo via Football.ua/Creative Commons

"I like to think of myself as a director," Andrea Pirlo once wrote, "on the pitch and in life." He surely did not foresee, or could at least not prevent, the ending of this year's Champions League Final, in which his club, Juventus, lost to Barcelona. Pirlo was left in tears as his last best chance at European glory passed him by. It speaks volumes about what Pirlo means that, even in a losing effort against global superstars Messi, Neymar and Suarez, the lasting image of the final will be that of this Italian genius and embodiment of cool overcome by that which he could not control.

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But a director directs, and Pirlo claimed his right to final cut on his career when he reportedly decided to leave Juve for New York City FC, an expansion team in Major League Soccer that currently plays its home games in Yankee Stadium. The signing is expected to become official sometime soon.

As auteurist moves go, this looks like something like Federico Fellini walking off set to direct some episodes of "I Dream Of Jeannie." But there is always the chance that Pirlo, one of his sport's most incisive seers, sees something the rest of us don't.

Read More: Take Me Out To The Soccer Game, Or A Night At NYCFC

What makes us revere Pirlo is that he shows us soccer in its essence; an experiment in the manipulation of space. As he himself wrote, "I perceive the game in a different way. It's a question of viewpoints, of having a wide field of vision." When we watch someone like Messi or Ronaldo do the seemingly impossible, we marvel at the sheer difficulty of the acts. A dancing slalom through defenders, a screaming run past helpless mortals—these appear as precisely what they are, and the roars they incite make sense. In contrast, when Pirlo does what he does—say, by sending a ball perfectly over an outstretched opponent sixty yards away—the crowd often reacts with a serene applause that washes over the stadium. It is an acknowledgement that, sure, anyone can put his foot through a ball, but they can't do it like that.

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Where Ronaldo seems faster than the game and dominates opponents, Pirlo seems slower than the game and dominates space; Messi dribbles the ball as if it was an extension of his body, and Pirlo passes as if it is an extension of his mind. These are not quite his peers—they're not quite anybody's peers—but Pirlo's talent is as original as theirs.

This ca. 2009 photo provided as proof that Pirlo was once youngish. — Photo by Simon Stacpoole/Offside via USA TODAY Sports

And yet, for all the brilliance of his direction, Pirlo has only so much control over what happens after he makes his pass and shifts the frame of a moment. Pirlo opens up a new, previously unseen field of possibilities with a pass, and then…maybe the play dies. His impact on the game is unmistakable, but difficult to quantify. Statistics for Pirlo, much like his play on the field, are almost anecdotal. It's not, "remember when Pirlo scored four," but "remember the Euro 2012 quarterfinal when Pirlo completed more passes himself than did the entire England midfield?" The game ended 0-0—Italy won in a penalty shootout that featured an absurd chipped penalty conversion by Pirlo—but he utterly dominated the proceedings all the same. It is precisely the ability to exert that type of control that makes Pirlo so memorable.

While Pirlo is past his best, his is somewhat less susceptible to age than those who rely on speed and strength. Pirlo will join Mix Diskerud and a pair of fellow slightly past-it European stars in (finally) Frank Lampard and David Villa on a team that is otherwise comprised of hard working if technically unspectacular players. It's easy to imagine that Pirlo's playmaking could help NYCFC play more creative, higher quality soccer than the MLS has seen. However, it's also possible that the the team, league, and player are not quite ready for each other. Pirlo himself has shown a tendency to become frustrated when he's not able to play a certain way. He is about to join a league that plays a different and more limited type of soccer than the one to which he's become accustomed.

In Pirlo's autobiography, I Think Therefore I Play—it's where all that stuff about being a director came from—he detailed his frustration at Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson. During a 2010 matchup against Milan, Ferguson had uber-industrious midfielder Park-Ji Sung man-mark the Italian superstar. As Pirlo puts it, Ferguson "set a guard dog" on him. Pirlo was ineffective and claims he will never forget the coaching maneuver, which he thought of as anti-football and a blemish on Ferguson's record. The move worked exactly as Ferguson wanted it to, but Pirlo pitches his objection at a philosophical level—it was tasteless, an offense against the very essence of the game. It is easy to wonder whether a player so dedicated to the game's beauty might find the grunty, pokey MLS equally offensive. But perhaps Pirlo will just see MLS' degraded aesthetics as another problem to solve. It's the director's job to make it work.