i'll work on digging up carlo, lippi quotes on him. Give it a little bit.
@second part.... don't confuse defensive workrate and ability. Pirlo is a good tackler. Pirlo is slow as fuck and exposed in space. Two differences.
you rarely see him in a 50/50 challenge lose the ball. Even in milan this was always true. Problem was in space, he can't actually catch the man running with ball. That's reality. And that was a huge milan problem. I've always known we have to compensate pirlo with more athletic players. It's just from point where clarence physically declined and wasn't able to play cm, we were never able to.
That's reality... it doesn't excuse pirlo, or unexcuse him. You just have to look at the reality of these situations and build a balanced team. That's a reason it bugs me people say boateng only lives on physical tools. So what? He has them, and they help him do things others could only dream of. It doesn't make him less of a footballer. And that's why pirlo is better w/ juve now. He has an extremely athletic but technically competent midfield.
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I just don't really buy the milan v. juve/italy arguments. In the latter two teams, they were cleverly constructed teams RIGHT around his ability. In milan, after 2006, we wasted him. We always had static, slow players infront of him. Essentially, instead of letting him do what he does, which is construct and lay the forward ball (which he used to do so often to kaka/sheva on the run) it went to seedorf who as much as i love, always frustrated me at CAM because he'd dwell and slow down the ball, it went to Ronaldinho who did similar etc. etc.
I wish i had video clips to prove it, but how often he'd move ball quickly up to ronaldinho on left or seedorf in middle and it'd stop. As opposed to sheva/kaka when he'd hit sheva on run for a goal or kaka on run and get the hockey assist.
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Not to always compare to Xavi, cause even I'll admit, at this point, what xavi's done last 4 years puts him in a league of his own..... but even compare to xavi. 2009 xavi got over 20 assists because he had messi, henry wide, etoo CF, and he'd be able to hit them constantly on a much more direct approach and score.
2011/12 xavi had less assists than piro, despite fact barca scored double the goals. Why? Cause they completely changed the system and it was essentially messi-ball, or messi doing a better version of what zlatan does. Which is fine, but you just lose the decisiveness from CM. And it wasn't like xavi was poor, it's just those passes he used to make to etoo or someone. They stopped and it went to messi and a much more indirect appraoch