He has a solution for that. No. “Maybe I would have done even better,” he stated, with a smile. His logic is predicated on greater than unflappable self-confidence. “It was a little more technical when I was playing,” he stated. “Now maybe it is more physical. But there were a lot of players in my generation, a lot of teams with technical players of the highest level.
“Maybe now there are not quite so many, so a bit of quality goes a long way. It would be just as valuable in this sort of soccer, maybe more so. Those kinds of players, the ones who are a little smarter, or a little more technical, are harder to find now. In all that speed, all that haste, there are certain situations where the most important thing is a little intelligence, a little technique.”
Besides, Pirlo is adamant that sure truths about soccer maintain, no matter how the sport’s fashions, its tastes, ebb and stream. He may watch it now with a supervisor’s eye, scouring what he sees for some strategic perception, some tactical maneuver, however he stays a participant at coronary heart. “You have to work within systems now more than you did,” he stated. “But it always comes down to the players.” A coach, he is aware of from private expertise, isn’t in full management of occasions. Even the best methods, essentially the most advanced schemes, hinge on the people tasked with implementing them.
“Everything can change,” he stated. “It can be quicker or slower, it can have one style or another, but it is always the players that make things happen on the field.”
In that, to Pirlo, it at all times stays the identical, acquainted, recognizable, as interesting because it has at all times been. “You can ask if it was more beautiful before, or more beautiful now,” he stated. “But it is always beautiful.”