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a lovely Sunday Times article about the best player in the world - I couldn't find the link without it being javascript and gay
Peerless Pirlo
Andrea Pirlo put Scotland to the sword in March. Now Italy’s midfield general heads to Hampden with an eye on lifting the World Cup next year. By Mark Palmer
Alberto Gilardino, this year’s must have among the footballing fashionisti of Serie A, follows Alessandro Nesta and Andriy Shevchenko towards a photo-shoot taking place in the airless afternoon outside the Milan players’ restaurant. It is akin to having a still-life done of the family jewels. Between them, the club’s Milan’s signature signings of summers 2005, 2002 and 1999, necessitated almost seven times this close season’s cumulative Premierleague spend.
But whatever well-being the trio can guarantee at either extreme of the field, they will never pierce Andrea Pirlo’s semantically sound claim to being the single most priceless asset on owner Silvio Berlusconi’s accounts. He cost the Lombards nothing, and now they wouldn’t sell him for anything. “No player in Europe can match his qualities,” pealed Carlo Ancelotti recently. “There was one in the past, and that was me.”
The Milan manager, who set the bar with two scudetti and two European Cups during his time in the rossoneri midfield, is convinced it stands to be cleared by a man Internazionale deemed fit for a different sort of high jump four short years ago, when they entrusted him to the care of the other San Siro curva even after seeing his now characteristic, at once assertive and understated, influence flower during loan spells out in the sticks at Reggina and Brescia.
Not for the first, or last, time, it was a case of Inter’s staffing policy taking equal opportunities to a new level, whereby those with the brightest credentials, like the then two-times Champions League winner Clarence Seedorf, are discounted as overqualified. The previous year, Pirlo had co-ordinated Italy’s win at the under-21 European championships in cahoots with Gilardino, a full four seasons after establishing himself as a regular first time out at his native Brescia, aged a coltish 17.
This, then, is not a rags to riches tale, but one of a treasure chest so scarcely concealed that the topsoil barely covered it. While Inter looked a gift horse in the mouth, Ancelotti wagered knowingly on the thoroughbred that Pirlo affirms it was self-evident he would become. “I don’t regret what happened at Inter, because I knew that sooner or later I’d play for a big club,” he states, his scratchy, detached voice casually clinging to the same pitch in the sameway Henrik Larsson’s does, making it impossible to determine whether it implies sniffiness or simply conviction. “It was my ambition, and I’ve managed it. Carlo has managed to bring out the best in me for the simple reason that he has played me. I don’t regard what I’ve done here as revenge, but personal success. Getting a game week in week out, I’ve been able to show what I have in me.”
That amounts to so much, you wonder how such a minimalist physique squashes it all in. The 26-year-old is disarmingly sinuous in the flesh, emphasising the acuteness of timing and spattial awareness that are behind every willowy interception he makes as gatekeeper to Milan’s defence. From that deep-lying position, Pirlo also plays butler, feeding and watering the attacking glitterati, whether in the form of the bread-and-butter passes he can often be seen fiddling to Seedorf on the left of Milan’s diamond, or the champagne 50-yarders Shevchenko loves him to uncork for his Lamborghini legs to scorch past opposition defences. The icing comes in the shape of the overpoweringly sweet connection he fuses between boot and ball at free-kicks, anywhere and everywhere within sight of the 18-yard line. Craig Gordon and Rab Douglas each conceded one for Scotland at Pirlo’s home ground five months ago, and even if they had been in situ in goal together, it is doubtful either shot would have been ensnared.
As the goalkeepers’ more advanced colleagues that night will testify, Pirlo is nigh-on impossible to pin down, not least in terms of defining what he is. His all-round input means he can readily be called the complete package, but still he does not fit snugly into any of the conventional midfield designations. Free-kick time aside, he doesn’t do box-to box like, say, Michael Ballack, but the German cannot offer a comparable level of defensive wakefulness. Patrick Vieira, now across the Po valley at Juventus, is stouter in the challenge, yet could never be considered as consistently concrete an attacking threat.
And for all he contests that natural ability is the last word in explaining the finished article, the Pirlo that will aggravate Scotland at both ends on Saturday is the product of years of studied refinement. He started out as a striker, before former Brescia manager Carlo Mazzone initiated the gradual retreat accelerated by Ancelotti. Although admitting to preliminary concern that his artistic bent might be flattened so far from what he then perceived as the game’s epicentre, he resolved to give it a bash, much like his prosperous approach to dead ball situations. Again in a similar vein to those free-kicks, there has been significantly more hit than miss to the returns on the move.
“I wouldn’t say I was outright sceptical when Carlo said he wanted me to take on defensive responsibility, but it’s something I’ve definitely had to work on. I’m still trying to perfect the defensive side of my game. Every day, I’ll work and work on it on the training field: angles, where I position myself, choosing the right pass, that sort of thing. I can always get better. When you start out that deep, it’s important to know how to work back effectively, but even when I played striker I liked to drop deep, pick up the ball, and get things going from there.”
His manager is the one currently seeking to engineer fresh thrust for a rossoneri engine that cut out at crucial times last year. After winning the Champions League and Serie A in successive seasons, last time Milan surrendered 19 home points and thus the latter to Juventus, then lost their bottle just as the party should have been getting going to celebrate reclaiming the former against Liverpool.
Ancelotti has responded in time-honoured Milan fashion by signing forwards to shoot them out of a corner, Gilardino eventually wrestled away from Parma and Christian Vieri becoming the latest cross-city giveaway courtesy of Inter.
Berlusconi should now be granted his oft-uttered wish that Milan always start with two strikers, given that besides that pair and Shevchenko, Filippo Inzaghi will also enter the frame on the rare occasions he isn’t either injured or offside.
“The two new guys will give us something we maybe could have done with more of last year: the ability to hold on to the ball up front, link up with the midfield, and also make runs into space for us [midfielders] to pick out,” says Pirlo. “They’re both what I woul’d call modern strikers, with those complete attributes,” observes Pirlo. They are likely to be serviced by a midfield also sporting modifications.
The number of goals Milan conceded last time out that started lifecame from out wide did not reflect well on a diamond consisting of four players who all naturally gravitate to the central areas. There are whispers of Ancelotti parking a flat rank of four across the middle, with Cafu and Marek Jankulovski, the Czech recently arrived from Udinese, on the flanks in a hazy capacity somewhere between wing-back and out-and-out midfielder. To allow for the retention of the flavoursome Kaka’ behind the two strikers, Milan would go with three at the back instead of four.
“It’s something that we can turn to in certain situations; it’s really just another option. I don’t think much would change in terms of my own responsibilities, the role really wouldn’t be that different,” says Pirlo. “I’m used to covering back when the full-backs push on in attack. Even though I’ve played my best football as part of the diamond, I wouldn’t consider myself as having lost out if we do go for the 3-4-1-2.”
The midfield four-in-a-row is a system he has grown into since Marcello Lippi first used it to prop up the previously lopsided national team against Belarus last October. With Rino Gattuso and Roma’s Daniele De Rossi as minders, Pirlo is advantageously placed to pick a path through the midfield crowds for Gianluca Zambrotta, the boomerang of a wing-back on the left, or whichever of Francesco Totti and Alessandro Del Piero is the waterway to Vieri from the trequartista position.
Totti, his temperature back on the scale after flu kept him from the 2-1 friendly win over Ireland 11 days ago, is at his most effective as what his countrymen call the seconda punta, a slightly withdrawn position in support of the focal, generally more physical striker. If Lippi brings the Roma captain straight back into the team, Del Piero and Gilardino would likely drop out to accommodate a further wide midfielder like Juventus’s Mauro Camoranesi, a decision Pirlo fears would be unreasonably guarded even by Italian standards “With three forwards, simply put, you create more chances to score. You’re more dangerous in attacking areas, the best thing you can be in this game. Scotland will be a difficult match, yes, but I think we’ve got all the tools we need to win.”
So let’s use them, seems to be the subtext. Lippi’s immediate predecessor, Giovanni Trapattoni, tightened the noose round his managerial neck by hovering with the guillotine whenever individuality raised its head in his team. He initially refused to pick Pirlo, saying that to do so would be “like putting Zico just in front of the defence”.
Lippi, by contrast, has animated the forwards but, o tempores, seen his backline concede five goals in six Group 5 matches. The trequartista in Pirlo comes out when he evaluates that trade-off. “We’re a better side now,” he says firmly. “The football Lippi has us playing is more modern; he’s got more new ideas. Trapattoni was more old-fashioned in his approach, but you could say he’s been vindicated by what he’s done at club level. Lippi is better at communicating his ideas – he’s trying to bring the fundaments of his success at Juventus to this job.”
Two more sectional wins should be enough to see the five-times Serie A-winning coach to his first finals in
Germany next year. Since France filched Euro 2000 from them in the tournament’s closing seconds, Italy have fragmented catastrophically at major tournaments, going out of World Cup 2002 to South Korea in the second round, and winning only one of three games in a moderate group at the European Championships last year.
When they last reached the World Cup final in 1994, a 15-year-old Pirlo and his classmates annexed a Brescia bar to watch Roberto Baggio, his sole boyhood hero and later room-mate at Inter, send the decisive shoot-out penalty into orbit and the trophy, sculpted by compatriot Silvio Gazazniga 20twenty years earlier, into Brazilan hands. Ever since, Italy have always said it is going to be their year, but this time they actually seem to believe it themselves.
“For this Italy side, winning the World Cup has to be a major objective,” informs Pirlo. “Things didn’t work out for us at Euro 2004 not because we had no desire, but because there was a lack of organisation on the pitch; we didn’t turn up and play as a unit. In that regard, I was interested by the criticism David James took last week. You have to be prepared for every game, and concentrate fully on it; that’s a basic matter of respect for your teammates and everyone who’s watching. Our side is more solid and more of a team than in previous years. We’ve got to take care of qualifying first, and once we’ve done that we’ll start thinking about how we’re going to tackle the tournament itself.”
With Pirlo bound to turn the midfield into his field, there will never be a better time for the current crop of Azzurri to make hay.
Peerless Pirlo
Andrea Pirlo put Scotland to the sword in March. Now Italy’s midfield general heads to Hampden with an eye on lifting the World Cup next year. By Mark Palmer
Alberto Gilardino, this year’s must have among the footballing fashionisti of Serie A, follows Alessandro Nesta and Andriy Shevchenko towards a photo-shoot taking place in the airless afternoon outside the Milan players’ restaurant. It is akin to having a still-life done of the family jewels. Between them, the club’s Milan’s signature signings of summers 2005, 2002 and 1999, necessitated almost seven times this close season’s cumulative Premierleague spend.
But whatever well-being the trio can guarantee at either extreme of the field, they will never pierce Andrea Pirlo’s semantically sound claim to being the single most priceless asset on owner Silvio Berlusconi’s accounts. He cost the Lombards nothing, and now they wouldn’t sell him for anything. “No player in Europe can match his qualities,” pealed Carlo Ancelotti recently. “There was one in the past, and that was me.”
The Milan manager, who set the bar with two scudetti and two European Cups during his time in the rossoneri midfield, is convinced it stands to be cleared by a man Internazionale deemed fit for a different sort of high jump four short years ago, when they entrusted him to the care of the other San Siro curva even after seeing his now characteristic, at once assertive and understated, influence flower during loan spells out in the sticks at Reggina and Brescia.
Not for the first, or last, time, it was a case of Inter’s staffing policy taking equal opportunities to a new level, whereby those with the brightest credentials, like the then two-times Champions League winner Clarence Seedorf, are discounted as overqualified. The previous year, Pirlo had co-ordinated Italy’s win at the under-21 European championships in cahoots with Gilardino, a full four seasons after establishing himself as a regular first time out at his native Brescia, aged a coltish 17.
This, then, is not a rags to riches tale, but one of a treasure chest so scarcely concealed that the topsoil barely covered it. While Inter looked a gift horse in the mouth, Ancelotti wagered knowingly on the thoroughbred that Pirlo affirms it was self-evident he would become. “I don’t regret what happened at Inter, because I knew that sooner or later I’d play for a big club,” he states, his scratchy, detached voice casually clinging to the same pitch in the sameway Henrik Larsson’s does, making it impossible to determine whether it implies sniffiness or simply conviction. “It was my ambition, and I’ve managed it. Carlo has managed to bring out the best in me for the simple reason that he has played me. I don’t regard what I’ve done here as revenge, but personal success. Getting a game week in week out, I’ve been able to show what I have in me.”
That amounts to so much, you wonder how such a minimalist physique squashes it all in. The 26-year-old is disarmingly sinuous in the flesh, emphasising the acuteness of timing and spattial awareness that are behind every willowy interception he makes as gatekeeper to Milan’s defence. From that deep-lying position, Pirlo also plays butler, feeding and watering the attacking glitterati, whether in the form of the bread-and-butter passes he can often be seen fiddling to Seedorf on the left of Milan’s diamond, or the champagne 50-yarders Shevchenko loves him to uncork for his Lamborghini legs to scorch past opposition defences. The icing comes in the shape of the overpoweringly sweet connection he fuses between boot and ball at free-kicks, anywhere and everywhere within sight of the 18-yard line. Craig Gordon and Rab Douglas each conceded one for Scotland at Pirlo’s home ground five months ago, and even if they had been in situ in goal together, it is doubtful either shot would have been ensnared.
As the goalkeepers’ more advanced colleagues that night will testify, Pirlo is nigh-on impossible to pin down, not least in terms of defining what he is. His all-round input means he can readily be called the complete package, but still he does not fit snugly into any of the conventional midfield designations. Free-kick time aside, he doesn’t do box-to box like, say, Michael Ballack, but the German cannot offer a comparable level of defensive wakefulness. Patrick Vieira, now across the Po valley at Juventus, is stouter in the challenge, yet could never be considered as consistently concrete an attacking threat.
And for all he contests that natural ability is the last word in explaining the finished article, the Pirlo that will aggravate Scotland at both ends on Saturday is the product of years of studied refinement. He started out as a striker, before former Brescia manager Carlo Mazzone initiated the gradual retreat accelerated by Ancelotti. Although admitting to preliminary concern that his artistic bent might be flattened so far from what he then perceived as the game’s epicentre, he resolved to give it a bash, much like his prosperous approach to dead ball situations. Again in a similar vein to those free-kicks, there has been significantly more hit than miss to the returns on the move.
“I wouldn’t say I was outright sceptical when Carlo said he wanted me to take on defensive responsibility, but it’s something I’ve definitely had to work on. I’m still trying to perfect the defensive side of my game. Every day, I’ll work and work on it on the training field: angles, where I position myself, choosing the right pass, that sort of thing. I can always get better. When you start out that deep, it’s important to know how to work back effectively, but even when I played striker I liked to drop deep, pick up the ball, and get things going from there.”
His manager is the one currently seeking to engineer fresh thrust for a rossoneri engine that cut out at crucial times last year. After winning the Champions League and Serie A in successive seasons, last time Milan surrendered 19 home points and thus the latter to Juventus, then lost their bottle just as the party should have been getting going to celebrate reclaiming the former against Liverpool.
Ancelotti has responded in time-honoured Milan fashion by signing forwards to shoot them out of a corner, Gilardino eventually wrestled away from Parma and Christian Vieri becoming the latest cross-city giveaway courtesy of Inter.
Berlusconi should now be granted his oft-uttered wish that Milan always start with two strikers, given that besides that pair and Shevchenko, Filippo Inzaghi will also enter the frame on the rare occasions he isn’t either injured or offside.
“The two new guys will give us something we maybe could have done with more of last year: the ability to hold on to the ball up front, link up with the midfield, and also make runs into space for us [midfielders] to pick out,” says Pirlo. “They’re both what I woul’d call modern strikers, with those complete attributes,” observes Pirlo. They are likely to be serviced by a midfield also sporting modifications.
The number of goals Milan conceded last time out that started lifecame from out wide did not reflect well on a diamond consisting of four players who all naturally gravitate to the central areas. There are whispers of Ancelotti parking a flat rank of four across the middle, with Cafu and Marek Jankulovski, the Czech recently arrived from Udinese, on the flanks in a hazy capacity somewhere between wing-back and out-and-out midfielder. To allow for the retention of the flavoursome Kaka’ behind the two strikers, Milan would go with three at the back instead of four.
“It’s something that we can turn to in certain situations; it’s really just another option. I don’t think much would change in terms of my own responsibilities, the role really wouldn’t be that different,” says Pirlo. “I’m used to covering back when the full-backs push on in attack. Even though I’ve played my best football as part of the diamond, I wouldn’t consider myself as having lost out if we do go for the 3-4-1-2.”
The midfield four-in-a-row is a system he has grown into since Marcello Lippi first used it to prop up the previously lopsided national team against Belarus last October. With Rino Gattuso and Roma’s Daniele De Rossi as minders, Pirlo is advantageously placed to pick a path through the midfield crowds for Gianluca Zambrotta, the boomerang of a wing-back on the left, or whichever of Francesco Totti and Alessandro Del Piero is the waterway to Vieri from the trequartista position.
Totti, his temperature back on the scale after flu kept him from the 2-1 friendly win over Ireland 11 days ago, is at his most effective as what his countrymen call the seconda punta, a slightly withdrawn position in support of the focal, generally more physical striker. If Lippi brings the Roma captain straight back into the team, Del Piero and Gilardino would likely drop out to accommodate a further wide midfielder like Juventus’s Mauro Camoranesi, a decision Pirlo fears would be unreasonably guarded even by Italian standards “With three forwards, simply put, you create more chances to score. You’re more dangerous in attacking areas, the best thing you can be in this game. Scotland will be a difficult match, yes, but I think we’ve got all the tools we need to win.”
So let’s use them, seems to be the subtext. Lippi’s immediate predecessor, Giovanni Trapattoni, tightened the noose round his managerial neck by hovering with the guillotine whenever individuality raised its head in his team. He initially refused to pick Pirlo, saying that to do so would be “like putting Zico just in front of the defence”.
Lippi, by contrast, has animated the forwards but, o tempores, seen his backline concede five goals in six Group 5 matches. The trequartista in Pirlo comes out when he evaluates that trade-off. “We’re a better side now,” he says firmly. “The football Lippi has us playing is more modern; he’s got more new ideas. Trapattoni was more old-fashioned in his approach, but you could say he’s been vindicated by what he’s done at club level. Lippi is better at communicating his ideas – he’s trying to bring the fundaments of his success at Juventus to this job.”
Two more sectional wins should be enough to see the five-times Serie A-winning coach to his first finals in
Germany next year. Since France filched Euro 2000 from them in the tournament’s closing seconds, Italy have fragmented catastrophically at major tournaments, going out of World Cup 2002 to South Korea in the second round, and winning only one of three games in a moderate group at the European Championships last year.
When they last reached the World Cup final in 1994, a 15-year-old Pirlo and his classmates annexed a Brescia bar to watch Roberto Baggio, his sole boyhood hero and later room-mate at Inter, send the decisive shoot-out penalty into orbit and the trophy, sculpted by compatriot Silvio Gazazniga 20twenty years earlier, into Brazilan hands. Ever since, Italy have always said it is going to be their year, but this time they actually seem to believe it themselves.
“For this Italy side, winning the World Cup has to be a major objective,” informs Pirlo. “Things didn’t work out for us at Euro 2004 not because we had no desire, but because there was a lack of organisation on the pitch; we didn’t turn up and play as a unit. In that regard, I was interested by the criticism David James took last week. You have to be prepared for every game, and concentrate fully on it; that’s a basic matter of respect for your teammates and everyone who’s watching. Our side is more solid and more of a team than in previous years. We’ve got to take care of qualifying first, and once we’ve done that we’ll start thinking about how we’re going to tackle the tournament itself.”
With Pirlo bound to turn the midfield into his field, there will never be a better time for the current crop of Azzurri to make hay.
Page:
Peerless Pirlo?
Pfft.
A non-ironic headline about Kaka?
Tough. But I've got one:
"Kaka > Pirlo"
***********
Ri...who?
No Cha Do Ri jokes now... ;)
Pfft.
A non-ironic headline about Kaka?
Tough. But I've got one:
"Kaka > Pirlo"
***********
Ri...who?
No Cha Do Ri jokes now... ;)
There will be no end to this until the world cup where we all realise that Riquelme is God.
down wrote:
> some RUBBISH from "The Two Dannys." Seriously, it's awful.
Oh definitely, I completely agree. That's their third column I think. I really didn't get the first two.
> By the way, does the English "The Game" have Scottish
> football at the end of it?
Yeah. There's also the occasional article on the SPL in The Sunday Times. There was quite a bit about Strachan during his shaky start.
> some RUBBISH from "The Two Dannys." Seriously, it's awful.
Oh definitely, I completely agree. That's their third column I think. I really didn't get the first two.
> By the way, does the English "The Game" have Scottish
> football at the end of it?
Yeah. There's also the occasional article on the SPL in The Sunday Times. There was quite a bit about Strachan during his shaky start.
Clazon wrote:
> Also add to Kaka's plus list:
>
> - Stunning versatility of pass
Doesn't come CLOSE to Pirlo. Not even close. Agreed, he was awesome against Liverpool, but Pirlo can pass like that in every game, especially to Cafu
> - Incredible ability to make something out of nothing
Hmm. I'll give you that.
> - Many many years ahead of him to get even better
Pirlo's young too, and as he doesn't run around like a maniac, is more likely to last longer.
> - He was linked with teh mighty gooners
Huh. So was Emre;
> - Non horse-like face
> - Boyish good looks
hehe, I'll give you that.
> - Element of irony about his name
But! PEERLESS PIRLO. See that? Try and make non-ironic headlines about Kaka.
go on.
> Also add to Kaka's plus list:
>
> - Stunning versatility of pass
Doesn't come CLOSE to Pirlo. Not even close. Agreed, he was awesome against Liverpool, but Pirlo can pass like that in every game, especially to Cafu
> - Incredible ability to make something out of nothing
Hmm. I'll give you that.
> - Many many years ahead of him to get even better
Pirlo's young too, and as he doesn't run around like a maniac, is more likely to last longer.
> - He was linked with teh mighty gooners
Huh. So was Emre;
> - Non horse-like face
> - Boyish good looks
hehe, I'll give you that.
> - Element of irony about his name
But! PEERLESS PIRLO. See that? Try and make non-ironic headlines about Kaka.
go on.
down wrote:
> Seriously.
>
> He could beat up Gattuso.
lolz m8.
> He's also the best player in the world in his position, and one of
> only three players in Milan that I wouldn't swap for anyone else, the
> list being Sheva, Nesta and Pirlo.
Pfft. I wouldn't keep Nesta. The PES test rules over all and Ali always performs clownish activities at the back.
:D
> Seriously.
>
> He could beat up Gattuso.
lolz m8.
> He's also the best player in the world in his position, and one of
> only three players in Milan that I wouldn't swap for anyone else, the
> list being Sheva, Nesta and Pirlo.
Pfft. I wouldn't keep Nesta. The PES test rules over all and Ali always performs clownish activities at the back.
:D
down wrote:
> Sven saying "critics won't hound him out"
Damn.
> An article about transfer lessons from the past and how much each
> player in the list cost per appearance
That'll be Finkelstein won't it?
> Sven saying "critics won't hound him out"
Damn.
> An article about transfer lessons from the past and how much each
> player in the list cost per appearance
That'll be Finkelstein won't it?
Seriously.
He could beat up Gattuso.
He's also the best player in the world in his position, and one of only three players in Milan that I wouldn't swap for anyone else, the list being Sheva, Nesta and Pirlo.
He could beat up Gattuso.
He's also the best player in the world in his position, and one of only three players in Milan that I wouldn't swap for anyone else, the list being Sheva, Nesta and Pirlo.
Also add to Kaka's plus list:
- Stunning versatility of pass
- Incredible ability to make something out of nothing
- Many many years ahead of him to get even better
- He was linked with teh mighty gooners
- Non horse-like face
- Boyish good looks
- Element of irony about his name
- Stunning versatility of pass
- Incredible ability to make something out of nothing
- Many many years ahead of him to get even better
- He was linked with teh mighty gooners
- Non horse-like face
- Boyish good looks
- Element of irony about his name
I'll just highlight what Kaka has out of these:
down wrote:
> What does Pirlo have that Kaka doesn't?
>
> Passing from any range, free kicks, the ability to start any
> (basically all) attack, the ability to make everyone around him look
> amazing, helping out in defense, !!!!!helping out in attack!!!!!, random mad
> skillz that he just slips in WHEN NECESSARY like double dragbacks and
> stuff. He's also so good, that when he doesn't play, Milan suddenly go
> from looking like one of the best clubs in the world to looking very
> ordinary, EVEN WHEN KAKA PLAYS (ahahahahah) He can shoot from long range. He has
> a more even temperament and is more likely to drag a team back from
> losing. He's extremely good at penalties (Liverpool notwithstanding.)
> He could beat up Gattuso. (now you're just lying...)Everyone in Milan, when asked the best
> player in their squad says Pirlo. (Of course, because he's been there so long. It'd be like ageism otherwise. I'm sure the Arsenal players would say "Yeah, course. Lauren. He tries so hard...)
down wrote:
> What does Pirlo have that Kaka doesn't?
>
> Passing from any range, free kicks, the ability to start any
> (basically all) attack, the ability to make everyone around him look
> amazing, helping out in defense, !!!!!helping out in attack!!!!!, random mad
> skillz that he just slips in WHEN NECESSARY like double dragbacks and
> stuff. He's also so good, that when he doesn't play, Milan suddenly go
> from looking like one of the best clubs in the world to looking very
> ordinary, EVEN WHEN KAKA PLAYS (ahahahahah) He can shoot from long range. He has
> a more even temperament and is more likely to drag a team back from
> losing. He's extremely good at penalties (Liverpool notwithstanding.)
> He could beat up Gattuso. (now you're just lying...)Everyone in Milan, when asked the best
> player in their squad says Pirlo. (Of course, because he's been there so long. It'd be like ageism otherwise. I'm sure the Arsenal players would say "Yeah, course. Lauren. He tries so hard...)
Pennant about himself in prison
David James about himself being dropped
Sven saying "critics won't hound him out"
stuff about Owen and Liverpool and Newcastle
An article about transfer lessons from the past and how much each player in the list cost per appearance
article about Chelsea's sponsor
some RUBBISH from "The Two Dannys." Seriously, it's awful.
An article about teams picking teams against Chelsea that are guaranteed to lose by resting their important players for matches they can get points from.
A good article about Bolton's 4-5-1
and the rest of the football from the weekend
By the way, does the English "The Game" have Scottish football at the end of it?
David James about himself being dropped
Sven saying "critics won't hound him out"
stuff about Owen and Liverpool and Newcastle
An article about transfer lessons from the past and how much each player in the list cost per appearance
article about Chelsea's sponsor
some RUBBISH from "The Two Dannys." Seriously, it's awful.
An article about teams picking teams against Chelsea that are guaranteed to lose by resting their important players for matches they can get points from.
A good article about Bolton's 4-5-1
and the rest of the football from the weekend
By the way, does the English "The Game" have Scottish football at the end of it?
Page: