I Think Therefore I Play (12 page)

Chapter 15

Andrea had me in his sights after we won that first title. He took aim and fired, but it was flowers, not bullets that came flying out. Make love not war, he seemed to be saying. And if you’ve time left over, grab yourself a goal and dedicate it to me.

He appeared almost disbelieving as he lived out that dream in all its wonderful lightness. He was absolutely made up: in the seventh heaven of happiness. There were no clouds around, just 30 sunbeams shining on the pitch, one for each title. They say you shouldn’t stare at the sun, but Andrea seemed set on burning his retinas. When it’s paradise you’re beholding, you’ve no need to wear sunglasses. If anything, they spoil a smiling face, making it seem dull and coarse.

If we’re talking longing looks, however, nothing compares to the ones I got from André Schembri one ordinary night in Modena. I’m convinced the Malta midfielder had fallen for me: I could almost see the love hearts dancing about his face. He had his eyes glued on me from the very first minute of the match. Those eyes became fully his again only when we were back in our respective dressing rooms.

That game was in 2012, more precisely September 11 of that year. Schembri was like some kind of footballing kamikaze. Or perhaps just a kamikaze of love. He certainly had no interest in the ball – he treated it as if it was burst and thus completely without purpose. The only thing that counted was my presence at his side, or, more accurately, his presence at mine. We rolled along together, me and my imperfect shadow. I’d move, and he’d follow. I’d slow down, and he’d pull up the handbrake, too. I was the victim of a close encounter of the third kind. Had we been alone in a dark alley and not on a football pitch in front of 20,000 fans, I’d have called the cops. I’d have been within my rights to report that his passion had turned a little violent, because he certainly wasn’t holding back on the physical stuff.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked him.

“Sorry?” came the reply.

“What are you up to? You’ve been staring at me so long you must know every inch of my face. You’re booting me up and down the pitch and you’ve not even touched the ball yet. Do you maybe want to think about actually playing and not just trotting around after me?”

“Not possible. Our coach said the only thing I should think about is marking you. That and nothing else. My mission is to stop you.”

“Yes, but the ball’s away over there. It’s miles from us. At least let me breathe – you don’t need to be 10 centimetres from my face the whole time.”

“Who gives a toss about the ball? I’ve to watch you. You and nothing else.”

Had he been in possession of a ring, I’m sure he’d have got down on one knee and proposed. “I, André, take you, Andrea, as my lawful wedded target. To kick you, follow you and chop you all the days of my life, until ref do us part.”

The way he was carrying on really got on my nerves. I’d love to think that leeches are an endangered species, not one that’s perpetually on heat. But every time I end up disappointed. Malta were playing Italy, but Schembri was playing only me. An experience like that is enough to drive you mad. It’s just utterly exhausting.

“Are you actually having fun out here? I feel sorry for you,” I said.

“Who said anything about having fun? I’m simply carrying out the coach’s orders.”

“But you’re never going to enjoy the game like this.”

“Ah, but neither are you.”

And he was absolutely right. I didn’t enjoy it, and it wasn’t the first or last time. Back in the day, coaches would have their best guy mark the opposition No.10. He was the player who tended to have the most class and so the objective was obvious: stop him touching the ball.

Things have changed since then, though. Football has moved on, and it’s now the centre midfielders who get the most attention. Guys in my position are the ones who plot and construct the play and it’s us who now have the toughest bloke on the other team snapping away at our heels.

It’s always the same – every game I’ll leave the pitch with a load of bruises. I’ve even had Francesco Totti taking aim at me in a match we played against Roma.
⁴⁸
Every so often he does go off on one, but at least he apologised afterwards. The foul he committed really wasn’t like him and I’m sure he didn’t do it deliberately. I certainly don’t have any issue with him now.

It’s not easy to tame a mastiff that’s running around after you for a full 90 minutes. He’s the dog and you’re the bone: that’s just how it is for me, even if I’ll never get used to it. Football’s becoming more and more like wrestling and that’s really not a good thing.

I usually wind up swapping shirts with my pursuer at the end of a game. I even went through the ritual with Schembri. When you’ve been studied so intently for an hour-and-a-half, it’s as if you’ve known each other your whole lives. I always try to give these guys the slip. I’ll look to get into space and find a way to take the ball and play my normal game; to do my thing even with chains around my ankles. But there are times when it’s bloody hard. Even players who don’t have much ability can run and tackle all day long. They might be brainless robots, but they’ll have the physique of the craziest gym monkey. If I manage to dribble past them, they’ll never catch me in a million years. But if I run into them, it’ll hurt.

Opposition managers must be scared of me, otherwise they’d never employ these tactics, but knowing that is scant consolation. Pretty much all the guys who tail me aren’t really bothered about the constructive side of the game. They’ll join in with an attack if they have to but as soon as they’ve lost the ball they’ll be back at my side, forgetting about everything else. They just want to knock me down.

Even Sir Alex Ferguson, the purple-nosed manager who turned Manchester United into a fearsome battleship, couldn’t resist the temptation. He’s essentially a man without blemish, but he ruined that purity just for a moment when it came to me. A fleeting shabbiness came over the legend that night.

On one of the many occasions where our paths crossed during my time at Milan, he unleashed Park Ji-Sung to shadow me. The midfielder must have been the first nuclear-powered South Korean in history, in the sense that he rushed about the pitch at the speed of an electron. Back and forth he went. He’d try to contribute in attack and if that didn’t work, he’d fling himself at me. He’d have his hands all over my back, making his presence felt and trying to intimidate me. He’d look at the ball and not know what it was for. An unidentified rotating object, to his eyes. They’d programmed him to stop me and that was the only thing he was thinking about. His devotion to the task was almost touching. Even though he was already a famous player in his own right, he consented to being used as a guard dog, willingly limiting his own potential.

I live every one of these experiences as a gross injustice, and it’s not uncommon for me to feel real pity for whoever’s sent to watch me. They’re players – more than that, they’re men – who’ve been asked to go out there and act without dignity, destroying instead of creating. They’re happy to come across as utter crap as long as they make me look bad, too.

I’m a bit of a wandering gypsy on the pitch. A midfielder continually on the lookout for an unspoilt corner where I can move freely just for a moment, without suffocating markers or randy Maltese guys sticking to me like shadows. All I’m after is a few square metres to be myself. A space where I can continue to profess my creed: take the ball, give it to a team-mate, team-mate scores. It’s called an assist and it’s my way of spreading happiness.

It’s probably this movement from one area of the field to another (albeit on foot rather than by caravan) that gave rise to the story that I come from a Roma family. Or, to be more accurate, a Sinti one.
⁴⁹
The rumour first appeared in a high-profile newspaper article just before the Italy v Romania game at Euro 2008. At first I let it go, simply smiling at the headlines, but before long the media onslaught became unbearable. Some really serious untruths were said and written about my family, and they started spying on everything we did. They wrote stories about our daily habits, the places we went, the people we met. It was an annoying and dangerous invasion of our privacy and that of those we hold dear.

I’ve a pretty good idea as to how the rumour came about. As well as producing wine, my father Luigi has links with the steel trade. He and my brother are both involved with a company called Elg Steel. The metal trade has traditionally been the most popular line of work with the Sinti and, as such, somebody must have put two and two together to come up with five. The green light for a series of utterly crazy articles.

If I’d issued a strongly worded correction, a categorical denial, I’d have run the risk of causing offence. It would have looked like I was trying to distance myself from the Sinti community and position myself against them. My desire to state the truth could have been wrongly interpreted as an act of racism, and that’s a risk I wasn’t willing to take, for the simple reason that I find racists disgusting.

I’m not a Sinti, but saying that publically could have sparked a whole chain of mishaps, more for them than for me. At that point, it would have been their privacy being invaded and destroyed. There would have been a race to shine a light on the world that Andrea Pirlo had talked about. I know the pitfalls of certain situations with the media and, in this instance, I chose to avoid them.

The people who belong to that ethnic group are simply part of another culture. They’re made in one way, and we’re made in another. Two stories that are equally beautiful; two pieces of the same jigsaw.

I didn’t put things straight then so I’ll go ahead and do it now, saying what I would have liked to have done right at the start. My family have always hailed from Lombardy. I’m from Brescia, I’m Italian, I’m not a Sinti. And, most of all, I’ve got nothing against the Sinti. If I did, there would be something seriously wrong.

 

48.
During a Roma v Juventus game in 2013, a foul by Francesco Totti caused Pirlo to leave the field for some time. Totti was booked and went on to score the only goal in the game

49.
The Sinti are a Romani people from central Europe

Chapter 16

I’m Italian, but I’m also part-Brazilian. Pirlinho, if you like. When I take my free-kicks, I think in Portuguese and at most I’ll do the celebrating in my native tongue.

I strike those dead balls
alla Pirlo
. Each shot bears my name and they’re all my children. They look like one another without being twins, even if they do boast the same South American roots. More precisely, they share a source of inspiration: Antonio Augusto Ribeiro Reis Junior, a midfielder who’s gone down in history as Juninho Pernambucano.
⁵⁰

During his time at Lyon, that man made the ball do some quite extraordinary things. He’d lay it on the ground, twist his body into a few strange shapes, take his run-up and score. He never got it wrong. Never. I checked out his stats and realised it couldn’t just be chance. He was like an orchestra conductor who’d been assembled upside down, with the baton held by his feet instead of his hands. He’d give you the thumbs up by raising his big toe – somebody at Ikea was having a good laugh the day they put him together.

I studied him intently, collecting DVDs, even old photographs of games he’d played. And eventually I understood. It wasn’t an immediate discovery; it took patience and perseverance. From the start, I could tell he struck the ball in an unusual way. I could see the ‘what’ but not the ‘how’. And so I went out onto the training pitch and tried to copy him, initially without much success. In the early days, the ball sailed a couple of metres over the crossbar, or three metres above the sky to borrow from the Italian film of the same name.

Much of the time it went right over the fence at Milanello and I’d end up lying to the fans gathered outside, pretending I’d done it deliberately. “Boys, I want to give you a present,” I’d say, glossing over the fact that the session was behind closed doors and they shouldn’t have been anywhere near it. As I was speaking to outlaws, I told myself that what I said was neither a sin nor a crime.

The misses went on for several days and by that time the bloke in charge of the kit store was getting somewhat peeved. For him, it was a case of too many lost balls becoming a ball ache as I persisted with my experiments. Days soon turned into weeks.

The best ideas come about in moments of total concentration, a state you can reach when shitting, as Filippo Inzaghi will attest. My own Eureka moment arrived when I was sat on the toilet. Hardly romantic, but there you go. The search for Juninho’s secret had become an obsession for me, to the extent that it occupied my every waking thought. It was at the point of maximum exertion that the dam burst, in every sense of the term. The magic formula was all about
how
the ball was struck, not
where
: only three of Juninho’s toes came into contact with the leather, not his whole foot as you might expect.

The next day I left the house really early, even electing to skip the classic PlayStation battle with Nesta as I rushed to the training paddock. All I had on my feet was a pair of loafers – I didn’t need proper boots to demonstrate what I was now convinced was the right theory.

The kit-store guy had already turned up for duty.

“Can you pass me a ball, please?” I asked.

“Get to fuck,” he said under his breath, almost hissing at me.

“What was that?” I replied.

“I said I saw a duck.”

“Right you are. Go on, you fool, throw me over a ball.”

Reluctantly, he chucked one across. Mentally, he was already preparing himself for a trip to the woods to recover it. Instead I stuck it right in the top corner, just where the post meets the crossbar. A geometric gem. I placed the shot so perfectly that it would have gone in even with a keeper. Luckily for our goalies, none of them were around.