10 best excerpts from Andrea Pirlo's 'I Think, Therefore I Play'

#2 ‘I don’t feel pressure, either...’

In the very next chapter, Pirlo describes the experiences of his childhood – how he outclassed each one of his playmates in competition. His description of how he dribbles past the rest of the opponent team’s players might seem a little tongue-in-cheek, considering how he throws in the dissatisfaction of his own teammates for good measure.

But the part where he describes his evening before the 2006 World Cup final is really the part where he shows mere mortals like us what stuff legends are made of: “I spent the afternoon of Saturday, 9 July 2006 in Berlin sleeping and playing the Playstation. In the evening, I went out and won the World Cup.”

Even the best of players are known to wilt under pressure. Pirlo is definitely not one of them.