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Watching the last game against Atalanta I noticed a few things about Pirlo's play. Now he didn't have a particular good game, he had a few bad passes, but he was usually very solid, and he made himself available for the defenders and kept play flowing nicely. I thought it was pretty much a typical performance from him this season. Now whats odd is that he doesn't seem to have lost any 'ability' since the great Pirlo, that made him one of my favorite players, he just doesn't seem to produce as much as he used to, even though he is playing solid.
Now I think the reason for this is really more down to the problems we've been having with our team the whole season. The first problem is that our defenders defend to deep, this is probably due to their lack of pace and coordination, since it's always a different defensive pair, so they're not as great at trapping as they should be. The other thing is the lack of pressure from the forwards and trequesta, as mentioned earlier. All this does that Pirlo usually receives the ball around the middle circle on our half, where he's really to far away to be dangerous, and what it usually ends up with is pass along the middle of the pitch to the LCM or RCM or a pass to the trequesta. In that postion he looks more like a libero than a midfielder, so no wonder he doens't create as many assists from there. I really think that he would be more dangerous dictacting play just on the other side of the middle, with our full backs already forward, so he'd have more and better passing options. The only way to achieve this would be to move the defensive line up, and get our forwards to pressure the ball, or he could play a different role, perhaps a role like Xavi in Barcelona.
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