Andrea Pirlo (58 Viewers)
- Thread starter Mark
- Start date
- Tags the goat of midfield
His role isn't really a defensive one though. Pirlo's strength is providing creativity against teams that are effectively parking the bus, rather than defending against teams like Madrid and Bayern. The way he's been performing recently I think he fully merits a one year extension.
Should we start moving away from our reliance on him? Absolutely, but throwing away a player of his class and usefulness would be silly; we're not Milan.
Should we start moving away from our reliance on him? Absolutely, but throwing away a player of his class and usefulness would be silly; we're not Milan.
That's why we have other players as well. As I said, we should move away from relying on Pirlo in every game as we're doing currently, but that's no reason not to extend his contract. While we should continue to improve our squad for the CL, being able to rest key players in the league without hindering ourselves is important, and that's what Pirlo offers. Plus, Pirlo can work his magic in parts of the group stages and possibly even deeper in the competition, depending on the opposition(e.g. Celtic last year).
I'm suggesting using him when doing so benefits us, not against Bayern where he's forced to defend, despite not being nearly as good at it as others. In games where we have the bulk of possession and are boxing the other team into their own half he's a perfect fit, but when we're the ones who are boxed in we're better off with other players.
I'm personally not a big fan of fast legs, Del Piero is my all time fav player and he wasn't that fast except in his prime before injury but that said in Pirlo's position against fast teams he has to defend and not only open up space or create, we've all seen how weak he was in both Bayern legs last season and in both Madrid legs. He's brilliant when he has the ball and often makes the difference but when Juve are facing a force they're playing with 10 man.
There's not a particularly large amount of teams that can box us in though. Off the top of my head it's Bayern, Barca, Madrid when they have a sense of urgency. Against other teams we either have the bulk of possession or split it evenly. So it's not like he'd be benched in every CL game, and he'd be playing regularly in the league. The thing is, nowdays we play him even when it's to our detriment, as we did against Bayern. There's big games where Pirlo thrives, but there's also ones where he doesn't. I'm not saying that Pirlo should be a bench player for us, only that we should start using formations that don't rely on him when they are tactically necessary, something we appear to slowly be moving towards. If he's starting in the bulk of the league games and a large amount of CL games I don't see why he'd see himself as not being a starter.
