Andrea Pirlo

I Think Therefore I Play came out in Italy in 2013 as Penso quindi gioco, written with the journalist Alessandro Alciato and put into English by Mark Palmer. It skips chronology, jumping between the Brescia youth team, dressing room jokes and the penalty Pirlo struck in the Berlin shoot-out in 2006 when Italy beat France for the World Cup. Pirlo was born in Flero, outside Brescia, in 1979, reached Serie A at sixteen, stalled at Internazionale, and was rebuilt at Milan by Carlo Ancelotti as a regista, the deep-lying playmaker who starts attacks from in front of his own defence. Two European Cups followed, in 2003 and 2007. Juventus took him on a free transfer in 2011, when he was thirty-two and widely thought to be finished, and won the league title in each of his four seasons there.