There's always an air of disappointment that accompanies reading an autobiography. To revel in your heroes success before revealing the machinations behind thrilling victories occasionally have the effect of pulling the curtain up from behind "The Phantom Of The Opera" to reveal a small bearded man operating a lever system.
Sometimes, the mystery is better than the truth.
This is somewhat emphasized in sporting autobiographies. Never known for their literary prowess, hearing tales of physical, emotional batterings spoken through the writings of a footballer is often a redundant exercise.
Football is a spectator sport, one to be watched rather than recorded in writing. Hard analysis can be found aplenty when typed by professional fingers, but even among experts the ability to place a clear image in a readers head, one with a vividness that does justice to the sporting romance portrayed is a skill possessed by very few.
Yet there is a heady sigh that can often accompany sporting books of this nature. One (perhaps unnaturally) expects to be able so tangibly read the passion emanating from the autobiography of a Roy Keane or a Steven Gerrard that it burns red on the page. The cacophony of simple sentences that follow almost sully the image, like a Mona Lisa in a dull, unwashed frame.
It is then, with a deep pleasure to read a biography that is written with the characteristics that a reader would expect from a particular player. "I think therefore I play" by Andrea Pirlo does just that.
Pirlo is the thinking man's football player, a testament to an almost lost art of grace and calm that is a rare sight among his uber-athletic peers. As a result the midfielder looks almost frozen in time, slowing the game to a pace more suited to him, seemingly oblivious (or perhaps impervious) to the trends enveloping in the game around him.
Pirlo's now famous facial hair (which despite first appearing in 2012 feels like it has always been present) emphasizes his image of experience, the groomed veteran looking more scholarly that sporting.
His prose echoes with wit, short sentences interjected with snide comments that so neatly fit with his clever movements on the pitch. Cutting remarks about peers ("We were 4-1 up so the chance of us losing were as likely as Gattuso completing an Art Degree") are interspersed with a metaphoric view of his own ability ("After all, Dolly will never just be an ordinary sheep").
The stories you'd heard before, detailing his exit from Milan in 2011 to Silvio Berlusconi blocking his move to Chelsea in 2009 and even Real Madrid, and Italy's World Cup victory.
But what you didn't have before was the way in which Andrea told you the tale, weaving with humour like one of his famous free-kicks (a notable example was where he calls a case pulled by Adriano Galliani from under the table during negotiations as "just as well hidden as Monica Lewinsky under Bill Clinton's desk in the Oval Office.")
The simplicity of Pirlo's writing style keeps the anecdotes lively, short sentences zipping along like a well-placed pass.
In review, the book was everything I hoped, because it was nothing like I feared.
No-one, (at least not me) expected Pirlo's book to be a thesis with a more expansive vocabulary than his passing range, but it was nevertheless pleasant to read a book from a sportsperson that for once, didn't leave me unsatisfied.
Rating: 4/5
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