Success by stealth

THERE is a certain symmetry that the player who got Italy’s World Cup campaign off to a winning start is the same one whose intervention earned them a place in tomorrow’s final against France.

It was Andrea Pirlo who scored Italy’s first goal in Germany with a fierce drive from outside the area just before half-time against tough opponents Ghana, and his all-round contribution helped him win Man of the Match for the game.

Pirlo was even more impressive in the semi-final win over Germany. With the hosts missing Torsten Frings and bringing in Sebastien Kehl to keep a close watch on Francesco Totti, it was Pirlo who was allowed room to control the midfield, break up

German possession and spread the play using the Azzurri wide men. He kept up his high level of performance throughout the match, and saved his finest moment till the 120th minute.

That was when Pirlo jumped on a loose ball on the edge of the area and fired in a last-minute rising drive that Jens Lehmann did well to push round the post. From the resulting corner Pirlo got the ball and slipped in a pass that tricked three German defenders and allowed full-back Fabio Grosso to curl the ball into Lehmann’s far corner.

“It was a great pass from Pirlo,” conceded German coach Jurgen Klinsmann.

The decisive moment came as no surprise to Italy coach Marcello Lippi, who has been happy to use Pirlo in the rare position of deep-lying second playmaker.

“Pirlo is an excellent element to the side,” said Lippi. “He is an individual of great quality and calm.”

Little wonder that Pirlo is in the running for FIFA’s player of the tournament award. All the more surprising, then, that he was ignored by Lippi’s predecessor Giovanni Trappatoni, who balked at the idea of playing someone so skilful so far back on the pitch. “It would be like having Zico just in front of the defence,” he moaned.

Pirlo is no stranger to the position: he first played there in his second spell at Brescia when he was 23. He broke through at the club under Mircea Lucescu as a 16-year-old, but after two troubled spells at Inter Milan, he returned to Brescia and played behind Roberto Baggio, his idol as a boy.

“I grew up wanting to emulate Roberto and when I was at Brescia on loan, Mazzone told me he wanted to use me in a new position. It was his intuition,” explained Pirlo.

What had happened before that makes Pirlo’s achievements on the biggest stage even more impressive: he had turned down a role in his father’s successful steel empire, a global business Pirlo could have joined at any time.

“I think my father wanted me to have the opportunities he did not have. And for me it was wonderful, because I never wanted to be anything but a footballer. So I devoted myself to that dream entirely.”

The devotion reaped early benefits, as his career started well: he played for Brescia in Serie A two days after his 16th birthday, then became the most expensive teenage signing ever when Inter bought him for 11.6m; he captained Italy to the European U21 title in 2000 and became the Azzurri’s all-time leading scorer at that level.

The Inter call was one he almost refused. “Inter president Massimo Moratti specifically requested me,” Pirlo told an Italian magazine. “I was 18 and all ready to join Parma. Moratti phoned and told me to call into the club HQ because he wanted me at Inter.”

Inter struggled to fit him into the side and he was loaned out to Reggina and Brescia. “When you have so much desire to play and you don’t, then you feel hurt,” he said. “Had I been given a regular run in the side I could have demonstrated my worth.”

Instead, coach Hector Cuper decided to sell him to rivals AC Milan in return for Argentine winger Andres Guglielminpietro. It was a move that would haunt the coach.

Pirlo moved but spent another year on the fringes as Milan brought in Clarence Seedorf and Rivaldo to boost their attacking options. He vowed to break into the team and when Rino Gattuso and Massimo Ambrosini, the first and second-choice holding midfielders, were unavailable for a pre-season friendly, he remembered the role he had played under Mazzone at Brescia. He asked Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti to play there.

“I was surprised,” Ancelotti recalled. “He didn’t seem to have the build or aggression to play there and he had never played there before. It’s certainly not a glamorous position and, with his talent, it seemed like a strange place to put him, as if Ronaldo wanted to play right-back. And yet he seemed determined. We needed a body there and so I agreed.”

Pirlo was superb, dictating the play like Pep Guardiola did at Barcelona or Dunga in the Brazil side of 1994.

“It was a gamble for me, but I felt as if I had to do something,” Pirlo said. “I had to find a way to play there and do all the defensive duties while playing to my strengths, which are passing and creating. And it worked.”

That’s an understatement: Pirlo has been a key figure in the side that has won a Serie A title and reached two Champions League finals. As well as that, Lippi has changed the national team’s formation to fit him in as the deep playmaker behind Totti, with the energetic Gattuso and Simone Perrotta making up the midfield.

“I’m happy to have won the faith of Lippi and am happy with my role in the team,” Pirlo said. “To feel that the boss believes in you is really important, especially when wearing the Azzurri shirt. I’m proud of this because I’m representing my country and the Italian game.”

Pirlo’s performances against Ghana and Germany have impressed everyone. He can now count Dutchman Johan Cruyff and Brazil coach Carlos Alberto Parreira among his admirers, who also include FIFA Technical Study Group member Gyorgy Mezey.

“During the entire game against Germany, he played superbly in front of the defence,” said Mezey. “He always did the right things at the right moments, and he was very smart in the last assist for Grosso.”

Gattuso, so important alongside Pirlo for club and country, is also one of his biggest fans. “I don’t understand how he manages to combine his feet and brain so quickly,” he said. “I think I would get a headache.”

Pirlo owes his success not only to his undoubted natural ability, but also in the faith of the three coaches who have let him play as the team’s creative anchor-man: first Mazzone, then Ancelotti and now Lippi.

Cuper, the coach who sold Pirlo to Milan for peanuts, has since left Milan and kept a very low profile. You can see why: Inter fans still accuse him of being responsible for the worst transfer deal in their history.