Still I don't get it. For a large part of last season Pirlo was awful, people here said so many nasty things. Towards the end he was brilliant again but it is irrelevant. When he was awful he continued to just gift the ball away and so on. Vidal too was really poor last season until the end. Yet we still won and won and won. I don't get it. Was it all Tevez?
Thats just not true. The "awful" Pirlo was one that didn't do the spectacular passes. He was a defensive liability in counter attacks but his passing and distributing was still top notch. Pull up his stats on who scored and see how many passes he did in each match and his success rate and how many chances he created. The pirlo from previous seasons did the spectacular through balls that he didn't do last season. Our midfield never looked brainless or disconnected with Pirlo around.
We played Pogba-Pirlo-Staruro on many occasions before and the midfield was dynamic and working very well and the attack got service and protection.
You thought he was awful because he stopped doing the spectacular and he was a defensive liability in counter attacks. When Pirlo makes a mispass or loses the ball under pressure it stood out because its fucking Pirlo. Lemina today has made more mistakes than Pirlo used to do in 5 matches last season. And when Lemina is not doing a mistake he is not reallly doing anything but a short pass. When Pirlo did not make mistakes he was distributing very well. No one claimed marchisio was the better passer even last season, people wanted marchisio because he can defend better.
If Pirlo was at the level of Lemina you'd have had a confused midfield like the one we see today, no possession and Tevez going very deep and trying to pull off a maradona moment. You didnt see that because Pirlo was there. Now if marchisio gets injured we are fucked. If not and he is in form then we are counting on Dybala to have a good game.