Andrea Pirlo
- Thread starter DucdeOrléans
- Start date
Drexl
New member
Beautiful image and Lineker's quote.
Pirlo should have won the Ballon d'Or in 2006, just like Xavi should have won it in 2010. But true geniuses are often forgotten.
XaviMessiGirl
New member
That shirt.
BerkeleyBernie
Senior Member
This will be interesting.
El Gato
Villarato!
Here's a The Athletic piece on Pirlo for anyone that's interested but not paying for it. Really good insight into Pirlo's philosophy & the contents of Pirlo's dissertation he had to submit to get his Pro coaching license.
https://theathletic.com/2073441/2020/09/18/pirlo-juventus-how-will-they-play/
Author: James Horncastle (The Athletic)
https://theathletic.com/2073441/2020/09/18/pirlo-juventus-how-will-they-play/
What to expect from Andrea Pirlo the coach
At the end of a whirlwind day in which Juventus moved on from Maurizio Sarri, the club?s chief football officer Fabio Paratici described their decision to replace him with Andrea Pirlo as ?very natural; dare I say, very Juventus-like?.
Presumably, Paratici was referencing the ambition it suggested and the choice being, to some extent, comparable to the gamble Juventus had made on a 37-year-old Giovanni Trapattoni becoming the next big thing in coaching in 1976.
?We also think Andrea was born to do this,? Paratici said. ?He was destined for greatness as a player and we strongly believe he is as a coach.?
Pirlo, as anyone who has read his book I Think Therefore I Play will know, did not initially foresee a career for himself in management. ?I wouldn?t bet a single cent on it,? he said. ?It?s not a job I?m attracted too.? One of the reasons the now-41-year-old provided was ?the lifestyle is far too close to that of a player. I?ve done my bit and in the future, I?d like to get back even a semblance of a private life.?
Pirlo did get that back for the last three years after retiring as a player and his perspective has changed since the book came out in 2013. As with so many retired footballers, it?s only after they hang up their boots that they begin to miss the adrenaline of the big occasions, the smell of freshly-cut grass at the training ground.
?Geometrically, and in his head, Andrea has always been a coach,? Pirlo?s former team-mate Paolo Maldini tells The Athletic. ?Talking to him over the last year or two, you can see how his thinking about the game has evolved since his playing days. He already had a clear idea of the kind of coach he wanted to be.?
After enrolling at Italy?s elite coaching school in Coverciano more out of curiosity than anything else, Pirlo says a ?spark? ignited within as he sat through lectures and went on field trips to see how Roberto D?Aversa worked at Parma. The 2006 World Cup winner came to realise coaching was his calling ?when I?d go to sleep imagining how I?d position players on the pitch?.
The role of Juventus Under-23s coach in this season?s Serie C was supposed to be his soft entry into a new profession. ?The hope,? as expressed at the time by the club?s president, Andrea Agnelli, ?is he can go on a journey like other coaches have been on.? Specifically, Pep Guardiola at Barcelona and Zinedine Zidane at Real Madrid. ?But, as Andrea said, he needs to earn it.?
A week is a long time in football and maybe what happened next shouldn?t have come as a surprise given the dark clouds lingering over Sarri. But the news caused a sensation. The immaculately-tailored former playmaker had been summoned from his staycation for a meeting in Turin where he was offered the chance to succeed Sarri less than 24 hours after Juventus? Champions League last-16 elimination at the hands of Lyon.
?As soon as they told me about it, I threw myself in head first,? Pirlo said. ?I?m convinced I am in the right place at the right time. There was nothing else to think about.?
Still, the swift turn of events took even some of the club?s most senior players aback.
?So now I have to call you Mister!?!?? tweeted Gianluigi Buffon.
?Up until a few weeks ago, you were Andrea to us. Now you?re our coach,? was the reaction of the captain, Giorgio Chiellini.
Aware his old team-mate was planning on coaching at some point soon, Chiellini regaled us with a cautionary tale in his own memoirs.
After calling Pirlo the player a ?martian? for his out of this world technical ability, he wrote: ?Andrea will have to come back down to earth as a coach because he cannot expect his players to have eyes in the back of their heads in the way he did. He can?t ask things of humans that are beyond their imagination.
?On that note, I remember my experience of Roberto Donadoni when he came to manage Livorno. I was just a kid. He must have been nearly 40 and theoretically speaking, he was still the best player on the squad, an absolute star. The things he asked us to do were fundamentally sound, but for us at that time, they were impossible. Roberto took a while to realise that and the same could happen to Andrea when he becomes a coach.?
Pirlo has assembled a staff that shares his ideas and, on the face of it, appears capable of completing his vision and turning it into reality.
Former Juventus centre-back Igor Tudor left his head coaching position at Croatia?s Hajduk Split to help Pirlo ?look after the defensive side of the game a bit? and bring authority and experience to the dressing room. The fitness coach Paolo Bertelli, head-hunted from Sampdoria, returns to the club after leaving with Antonio Conte in 2014 to go work with the Italian national team and then Chelsea. Roberto Baronio knows Pirlo better than anyone in football. They?ve been good friends ever since they were on loan at Reggina together in 1999-2000 and then won the Under-21 European Championship as team-mates the following summer.
Then there is Antonio Gagliardi, an instructor at Coverciano and the co-ordinator of the Italian Football Federation?s renowned match analysis department, who is taking on a new challenge as an assistant coach. Over the last month, Pirlo has provided hints of what kind of a coach he intends to be. But the most detailed exposition arrived on Monday when he presented his dissertation to Renzo Ulivieri, the rector at Coverciano, as Pirlo concluded his UEFA pro licence course.
Left to right: Antonio Gagliardi, Roberto Baronio, Igor Tudor, Paolo Bertelli
Pirlo revealed his influences ? Johan Cruyff and Guardiola?s Barcelona, Louis van Gaal?s Ajax, Carlo Ancelotti?s AC Milan and Conte?s Juventus ? expressing a desire to play a ?total and collective? style. He quoted Xavi ? ?the third man is impossible to defend? ? and Gagliardi ? ?a role in modern football is no longer a position, but a function?.
Speaking to The Athletic in February, Gagliardi said: ?What I mean by that is a player is no longer tied to a fixed position. We identify them by the jobs they perform, not the position they play. Take a full-back, for example. More and more these days, we?re seeing ?terzini-registi? (playmaker full-backs) like Trent Alexander-Arnold. In some systems, we?re seeing wingers come inside and midfielders push up to become No 10s. As systems become more and more fluid with rotations and interchanges, players are moving around the pitch and doing jobs that reflect their skill set. Alexander-Arnold can be Liverpool?s playmaker because he has a talent that?s way above average for a full-back.?
This chimes with Pirlo?s belief that football is undergoing a definitive shift away from ?static? team shapes to a more ?dynamic occupation of positions that are functional to the principles behind our playing model?. He sees a big part of his job as teaching players to ?recognise situations and adapt to the ever more liquid context of games?.
As with so many coaches in Italy, the principles matter more than the system and Pirlo follows the acronym CARP ? Costruzione (build-up), Ampiezza (width), Rifinitura (penetration in the final third) and Profondita (stretching the play in behind).
?Think of them as containers that need filling, irrespective of the formation you play,? Gagliardi explained to The Athletic last spring. ?Every team has to have players who occupy the width of the pitch, players who play between the lines in the final third, attack the space in behind and build up from the back. If you fill these four containers, the team will play a dominant, attacking style of football.?
As we saw in last weekend?s 5-0 win over third-tier Novara at their Continassa training ground, Juventus defended in 4-4-2 but went forward in a 3-2-5 configuration with Danilo, the nominal right-back, staying put and forming a back three with Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci.
In and of itself, this isn?t anything particularly novel ? Paulo Sousa pioneered hybrid systems at Fiorentina five years ago. Nevertheless, it remains in-step with what many elite sides are now practising in the Champions League and it was clear from Pirlo?s early press conferences that the high-pressing styles of Bayern Munich and Liverpool have left an impression on him.
At his first training session, he told the players two things. ?The first is I don?t want us to give the ball away. The second is that when we lose it, we have to win it back as quickly as possible.?
In his dissertation, Pirlo writes: ?My staff and I have noted that the top sides try to win the ball back 30-35 times per game with a 70 per cent success rate. The average length of successful regains is around five seconds and typically involves 2.5 players.? He adds that: ?The best teams in Europe perform around 45 pressing actions a game for a total of 12-14 minutes of effective time. Around 60 per cent of these actions end in the recovery of possession and only 10-15 per cent of the time does a top side?s press get beaten by opposing build-up play.?
His observation that midfielders are crucial in this enterprise and that the best gegenpressers tend to make more than 12 pressures a game helps explain the appeal of Weston McKennie, their new signing from Schalke. Another of the club?s newcomers, Serie A?s Young Player of the Year Dejan Kulusevski, didn?t just earn that accolade for his combined 18 goals and assists at Parma last season. His Pavel Nedved-like energy levels also stood out in StatsBomb metrics such as possession adjusted pressures, where he averaged 14.8 per 90 minutes. The 20-year-old Swede?s dynamism will be as welcome as his decisiveness at Juventus this season.
How much all of this is a departure from the high press Sarri introduced remains to be seen although ? pinches of salt at the ready! ? the team already looked more comfortable and fluid in that friendly against Novara, sending players into the opposition penalty area without any of the problems that characterised last season, when Cristiano Ronaldo and Paulo Dybala often looked isolated and crowded out.
Just check out this action, which led to the Portuguese forward scoring the opening goal.
If some of the concepts appear similar in name to what went before, the vibe around the team is different and we should never forget there is a lot more to football management than simply tactics. ?Coaches, especially ones that work at the top clubs, have to be top-level man-managers,? Maldini explains. ?They can?t do without those skills. You have to learn how to talk to the group, how to communicate. Communication and man-management are fundamental.?
Pirlo has spoken about involving everyone in his plans. Participation is key to his desire to ?bring enthusiasm back? to Juventus in the most holistic way possible. ?There are big benefits to bold, attacking football,? he explained in his dissertation. ?There?s more of a feel-good factor. Players and staff buy-in more. You need all that to forge the empathy behind all successful teams.?
Pirlo, Ronaldo.
From a compatibility standpoint, Pirlo also fits at Juventus in a way Sarri, unfortunately, did not. ?Even if I?ve only got to work with him for just a few days, lots of things have changed, starting from the fact you can see Pirlo was an important player for Juve,? their French midfielder Adrien Rabiot said this month while on international duty. ?His staff is made up of former players and he?s younger than Sarri, but also closer to what Juventus represents and what they are looking for. I hope it works for them and us all and that Pirlo takes us right to the top in Europe.?
Time will tell.
At the end of a whirlwind day in which Juventus moved on from Maurizio Sarri, the club?s chief football officer Fabio Paratici described their decision to replace him with Andrea Pirlo as ?very natural; dare I say, very Juventus-like?.
Presumably, Paratici was referencing the ambition it suggested and the choice being, to some extent, comparable to the gamble Juventus had made on a 37-year-old Giovanni Trapattoni becoming the next big thing in coaching in 1976.
?We also think Andrea was born to do this,? Paratici said. ?He was destined for greatness as a player and we strongly believe he is as a coach.?
Pirlo, as anyone who has read his book I Think Therefore I Play will know, did not initially foresee a career for himself in management. ?I wouldn?t bet a single cent on it,? he said. ?It?s not a job I?m attracted too.? One of the reasons the now-41-year-old provided was ?the lifestyle is far too close to that of a player. I?ve done my bit and in the future, I?d like to get back even a semblance of a private life.?
Pirlo did get that back for the last three years after retiring as a player and his perspective has changed since the book came out in 2013. As with so many retired footballers, it?s only after they hang up their boots that they begin to miss the adrenaline of the big occasions, the smell of freshly-cut grass at the training ground.
?Geometrically, and in his head, Andrea has always been a coach,? Pirlo?s former team-mate Paolo Maldini tells The Athletic. ?Talking to him over the last year or two, you can see how his thinking about the game has evolved since his playing days. He already had a clear idea of the kind of coach he wanted to be.?
After enrolling at Italy?s elite coaching school in Coverciano more out of curiosity than anything else, Pirlo says a ?spark? ignited within as he sat through lectures and went on field trips to see how Roberto D?Aversa worked at Parma. The 2006 World Cup winner came to realise coaching was his calling ?when I?d go to sleep imagining how I?d position players on the pitch?.
The role of Juventus Under-23s coach in this season?s Serie C was supposed to be his soft entry into a new profession. ?The hope,? as expressed at the time by the club?s president, Andrea Agnelli, ?is he can go on a journey like other coaches have been on.? Specifically, Pep Guardiola at Barcelona and Zinedine Zidane at Real Madrid. ?But, as Andrea said, he needs to earn it.?
A week is a long time in football and maybe what happened next shouldn?t have come as a surprise given the dark clouds lingering over Sarri. But the news caused a sensation. The immaculately-tailored former playmaker had been summoned from his staycation for a meeting in Turin where he was offered the chance to succeed Sarri less than 24 hours after Juventus? Champions League last-16 elimination at the hands of Lyon.
?As soon as they told me about it, I threw myself in head first,? Pirlo said. ?I?m convinced I am in the right place at the right time. There was nothing else to think about.?
Still, the swift turn of events took even some of the club?s most senior players aback.
?So now I have to call you Mister!?!?? tweeted Gianluigi Buffon.
?Up until a few weeks ago, you were Andrea to us. Now you?re our coach,? was the reaction of the captain, Giorgio Chiellini.
Aware his old team-mate was planning on coaching at some point soon, Chiellini regaled us with a cautionary tale in his own memoirs.
After calling Pirlo the player a ?martian? for his out of this world technical ability, he wrote: ?Andrea will have to come back down to earth as a coach because he cannot expect his players to have eyes in the back of their heads in the way he did. He can?t ask things of humans that are beyond their imagination.
?On that note, I remember my experience of Roberto Donadoni when he came to manage Livorno. I was just a kid. He must have been nearly 40 and theoretically speaking, he was still the best player on the squad, an absolute star. The things he asked us to do were fundamentally sound, but for us at that time, they were impossible. Roberto took a while to realise that and the same could happen to Andrea when he becomes a coach.?
Pirlo has assembled a staff that shares his ideas and, on the face of it, appears capable of completing his vision and turning it into reality.
Former Juventus centre-back Igor Tudor left his head coaching position at Croatia?s Hajduk Split to help Pirlo ?look after the defensive side of the game a bit? and bring authority and experience to the dressing room. The fitness coach Paolo Bertelli, head-hunted from Sampdoria, returns to the club after leaving with Antonio Conte in 2014 to go work with the Italian national team and then Chelsea. Roberto Baronio knows Pirlo better than anyone in football. They?ve been good friends ever since they were on loan at Reggina together in 1999-2000 and then won the Under-21 European Championship as team-mates the following summer.
Then there is Antonio Gagliardi, an instructor at Coverciano and the co-ordinator of the Italian Football Federation?s renowned match analysis department, who is taking on a new challenge as an assistant coach. Over the last month, Pirlo has provided hints of what kind of a coach he intends to be. But the most detailed exposition arrived on Monday when he presented his dissertation to Renzo Ulivieri, the rector at Coverciano, as Pirlo concluded his UEFA pro licence course.
Left to right: Antonio Gagliardi, Roberto Baronio, Igor Tudor, Paolo Bertelli
Pirlo revealed his influences ? Johan Cruyff and Guardiola?s Barcelona, Louis van Gaal?s Ajax, Carlo Ancelotti?s AC Milan and Conte?s Juventus ? expressing a desire to play a ?total and collective? style. He quoted Xavi ? ?the third man is impossible to defend? ? and Gagliardi ? ?a role in modern football is no longer a position, but a function?.
Speaking to The Athletic in February, Gagliardi said: ?What I mean by that is a player is no longer tied to a fixed position. We identify them by the jobs they perform, not the position they play. Take a full-back, for example. More and more these days, we?re seeing ?terzini-registi? (playmaker full-backs) like Trent Alexander-Arnold. In some systems, we?re seeing wingers come inside and midfielders push up to become No 10s. As systems become more and more fluid with rotations and interchanges, players are moving around the pitch and doing jobs that reflect their skill set. Alexander-Arnold can be Liverpool?s playmaker because he has a talent that?s way above average for a full-back.?
This chimes with Pirlo?s belief that football is undergoing a definitive shift away from ?static? team shapes to a more ?dynamic occupation of positions that are functional to the principles behind our playing model?. He sees a big part of his job as teaching players to ?recognise situations and adapt to the ever more liquid context of games?.
As with so many coaches in Italy, the principles matter more than the system and Pirlo follows the acronym CARP ? Costruzione (build-up), Ampiezza (width), Rifinitura (penetration in the final third) and Profondita (stretching the play in behind).
?Think of them as containers that need filling, irrespective of the formation you play,? Gagliardi explained to The Athletic last spring. ?Every team has to have players who occupy the width of the pitch, players who play between the lines in the final third, attack the space in behind and build up from the back. If you fill these four containers, the team will play a dominant, attacking style of football.?
As we saw in last weekend?s 5-0 win over third-tier Novara at their Continassa training ground, Juventus defended in 4-4-2 but went forward in a 3-2-5 configuration with Danilo, the nominal right-back, staying put and forming a back three with Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci.
In and of itself, this isn?t anything particularly novel ? Paulo Sousa pioneered hybrid systems at Fiorentina five years ago. Nevertheless, it remains in-step with what many elite sides are now practising in the Champions League and it was clear from Pirlo?s early press conferences that the high-pressing styles of Bayern Munich and Liverpool have left an impression on him.
At his first training session, he told the players two things. ?The first is I don?t want us to give the ball away. The second is that when we lose it, we have to win it back as quickly as possible.?
In his dissertation, Pirlo writes: ?My staff and I have noted that the top sides try to win the ball back 30-35 times per game with a 70 per cent success rate. The average length of successful regains is around five seconds and typically involves 2.5 players.? He adds that: ?The best teams in Europe perform around 45 pressing actions a game for a total of 12-14 minutes of effective time. Around 60 per cent of these actions end in the recovery of possession and only 10-15 per cent of the time does a top side?s press get beaten by opposing build-up play.?
His observation that midfielders are crucial in this enterprise and that the best gegenpressers tend to make more than 12 pressures a game helps explain the appeal of Weston McKennie, their new signing from Schalke. Another of the club?s newcomers, Serie A?s Young Player of the Year Dejan Kulusevski, didn?t just earn that accolade for his combined 18 goals and assists at Parma last season. His Pavel Nedved-like energy levels also stood out in StatsBomb metrics such as possession adjusted pressures, where he averaged 14.8 per 90 minutes. The 20-year-old Swede?s dynamism will be as welcome as his decisiveness at Juventus this season.
How much all of this is a departure from the high press Sarri introduced remains to be seen although ? pinches of salt at the ready! ? the team already looked more comfortable and fluid in that friendly against Novara, sending players into the opposition penalty area without any of the problems that characterised last season, when Cristiano Ronaldo and Paulo Dybala often looked isolated and crowded out.
Just check out this action, which led to the Portuguese forward scoring the opening goal.
If some of the concepts appear similar in name to what went before, the vibe around the team is different and we should never forget there is a lot more to football management than simply tactics. ?Coaches, especially ones that work at the top clubs, have to be top-level man-managers,? Maldini explains. ?They can?t do without those skills. You have to learn how to talk to the group, how to communicate. Communication and man-management are fundamental.?
Pirlo has spoken about involving everyone in his plans. Participation is key to his desire to ?bring enthusiasm back? to Juventus in the most holistic way possible. ?There are big benefits to bold, attacking football,? he explained in his dissertation. ?There?s more of a feel-good factor. Players and staff buy-in more. You need all that to forge the empathy behind all successful teams.?
Pirlo, Ronaldo.
From a compatibility standpoint, Pirlo also fits at Juventus in a way Sarri, unfortunately, did not. ?Even if I?ve only got to work with him for just a few days, lots of things have changed, starting from the fact you can see Pirlo was an important player for Juve,? their French midfielder Adrien Rabiot said this month while on international duty. ?His staff is made up of former players and he?s younger than Sarri, but also closer to what Juventus represents and what they are looking for. I hope it works for them and us all and that Pirlo takes us right to the top in Europe.?
Time will tell.
Author: James Horncastle (The Athletic)
Last edited:
Fati_Future_BallonDor
Well-known member
He has the same coolness like Zidane.
Its not going to save him.
Last edited:
FinBarcelonafan
Well-known member
He is screwed with this team.
Birdy
Senior Member
Pirlo has to first prove he is a proper coach, let alone a good coach.
Pep's success story had the ill effect of inflating people's minds into believing every great former player can be a world-class coach.
In fact only Pep and maybe Zidane (I say maybe because IMO Zidane is hyped after winning 3 CLs whereas his bar is much lower) and very few others have lived up to that standard.
The other great world-class coaches were mediocre players or never played football
Pep's success story had the ill effect of inflating people's minds into believing every great former player can be a world-class coach.
In fact only Pep and maybe Zidane (I say maybe because IMO Zidane is hyped after winning 3 CLs whereas his bar is much lower) and very few others have lived up to that standard.
The other great world-class coaches were mediocre players or never played football
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