How Andrea Pirlo accomplishes so much with such little effort
Mind over body. Andrea Pirlo is the epitome of the phrase.
He isn’t very fast. Nor is he very strong. His physical effort gives off the sense that he is not entirely invested in the result of any given match. He’s the supremely talented ringer you call to help out your men’s league team in a big game.
While you bust your butt, fly into (mistimed) tackles and gasp for air after another sprint forward, he’s there, gliding around the field, knocking the ball about and playing at his own pace — which seems infinitely slower in every way, except that nobody can catch him.
That guy is Andrea Pirlo (beard notwithstanding). You hate him because he makes it look so easy. You love him because he makes it look so easy.
At no time was this more pertinent than in Italy’s 2-1 victory over England this past Saturday in Manaus. There were plenty of questions heading into the match, with many focusing on the veteran midfielder. Would Pirlo, now 35 years old, be able to cope with the elements?
There was the suffocating heat of the Amazon jungle. There were the Three Lions, younger and faster than ever before. None of it mattered. While some players with superior physical traits, Raheem Sterling in particular, wilted in the humidity as the clock continued to tick towards the 90-minute mark, there was Pirlo, sweat dripping from his hair and beard the same way class was oozing from his neon yellow Nike boots.
By the time the referee blew the final whistle, his numbers were astounding. He completed 103 of his 108 passes as Italy tiki-taka-ed England into submission.
And yet, despite another commandeering display, there was a sense, as there always is with the bearded midfielder, that he didn’t have to exert very much effort to get the job done. Your eyes weren't deceiving you.
According to the official match stats, Pirlo made just five sprints against England, by far the fewest of any outfield player on the pitch. Joe Hart, by comparison, made three.
Yet the influence of the Juventus star was never in question. He was dominant.
Pirlo’s play inspires verbiage like few others. Majestic. Imperial. Virtuoso. You’ve heard them all, multiple times from multiple people. That said, there is one description that has never, nor will it ever, be used to describe the midfielder. That word is pace.
Pirlo reached a top speed of just 20.20 km per hour on Saturday in Manaus. Italian defender Gabriel Paletta, who looked at times like he was running in quicksand, hit 26.14 km per hour. Salvatore Sirigu was clocked at 20.63 km per hour.
In addition, the majority of Pirlo’s movement came in what FIFA describes as ‘low activity distance covered.’ Essentially, how much space a particular player covers on the field while not running at medium or full speed.
Of the 10,543 meters the Juventus star ran during the match, 6,707 of them came while at low activity.
The team average for such running was 5,627 meters.
A fascinating number when you consider that Italy enjoyed the larger share of possession, meaning their two center backs spent much of the match stagnant, racking up ‘low activity’ distance. Yet the team average in the category fell over 1,000 meters short of Pirlo’s total. A central midfielder at the heart of all the action put in less sprinting than anybody on the pitch.
Has there ever been a player who so efficiently accomplishes his tasks while seeming to put in the minimum amount of physical effort?
In this sense, Pirlo is an anomaly. We’re told that athletes, in any sport, are supposed to decline as they grow old. Sure, they’re smarter, more cognizant of the intricacies of the game and of how to take care of their bodies. But Father Time waits for no man. Try as they might, their standard inevitably drops.
Consider Spain’s Xavi Hernandez, a player often compared to Pirlo for the way he dictates the pace of a match. With their tournament on the line, Vicente del Bosque kept Xavi on the bench against Chile because of his poor game against Holland, where he was simply overrun in the midfield by faster, younger players.
At 34-years old, Xavi’s status on the national team isn’t the only thing in doubt. His place in Barcelona’s starting XI also appears to be winding down with the club’s recent purchase of Ivan Rakitic. Pirlo, meanwhile, just signed a two-year contract extension with Juventus.
How does he do it, when everything we know tells us he shouldn’t be able to?
“I do have something that burns inside me, an Olympic torch deep within,” Pirlo wrote in his wildly quotable autobiography. “It’s a violent fire, made of flames and passion and fed by pure pleasure. To put it out, to put me out, they’ll need to douse my soul.”
He continues to get better with age, and has come to define the deep-lying playmaker role known in Italy as the ‘regista.’ To think, he was once a traditional playmaker in a No. 10 role. Slower than he’s ever been, his ability to read the game and be in the perfect position seems to get better each year. His vision and understanding is constantly making up for his physical decline.
Today, as you watch Italy and Costa Rica sprint around the pitch inside the Arena Pernambuco, keep your eyes on the 35-year-old in the middle of the action, waltzing along to the beat of his own drum while his younger, more energetic counterparts struggle to keep up with his brain.