Xavi, Pirlo and Scholes: Strangers by birth, brothers by nature

Xavi, Andrea Pirlo and Paul Scholes are considered to be of the same mould

Oh, the tears!!

About a fortnight ago, it was Xavier Hernandez. A moving montage shown as a tribute to ‘El profe’ in his final home appearance was enough to break the emotional dams of those chameleon eyes, not to mention his legions of fans in the stadium and across the globe, giving rise to new saline rivers. The whole occasion, however, had positive undertones.

Xavi was leaving in the twilight of his career after giving his best years to his boyhood club. During this time, he had become the heart and soul of the tiki-taka team that blended philosophy with success to create awe-inspiring spectacles of football and, of course, ridiculous trophy-hauls (sextuple, anyone?). Moreover, he had won the La Liga in his last season and had a chance to complete a historic double-treble.

Where Xavi won, Andrea Pirlo lost. The timeless Italian playmaker had possibly seen this as an opportunity to win the Champions League one last time. As Barcelona ran away 3-1 winners on Saturday night, a tearful Pirlo was a poignant sight to behold. When it comes to moments stirring the human psyche, sorrow invariably trumps joy.

A warm post-match embrace between the two signified the end of an era, an era which also includes Paul Scholes. An equally diminutive and equally revered playmaker, Scholesy, like L’ Architetto and El profe, made his domestic league dance to his tune in the 2000s.

Considering their similar physical build, skill-set and personality (more on this later), it is remarkable how differently their careers started and progressed, how different their playing positions were in their respective teams and how different the perception of them was in their own country.

Their comparison in this light offers an interesting study on the influence of different environments (read footballing cultures) on individuals with similar talents.

Early career

Xavi

Xavi made his first-team debut for FC Barcelona at the age of 18 in 1998 under the mercurial Louis van Gaal. The Dutch manager placed immense faith in him, rating him higher than Zinedine Zidane, but the Cules were far from impressed.

To begin with, he was being played as a deep-lying playmaker, a position for which he had to compete with Pep Guardiola. Pep was more suited to this position as he was slower with a bias to the long pass. He was also a Barca legend by then and Xavi would occasionally get booed by fans on substituting him.

"I didn’t get recognition until 2008, when I’d been in the team for ten years. If I leaf through papers from years gone by, it makes me laugh: they said I was obsolete, that Edgar Davids made me look good, that I only moved the ball from side to side, they called me ‘the windscreen wiper.”

Guardiola’s exit in 2001 helped matters but till 2003, Xavi was played by managers in the former’s position. It would eventually take Frank Rijkaard’s appointment and, after that, Guardiola’s return as manager to set matters right.

Pirlo

Pirlo too had his fair share of early struggles. After signing for Inter from Brescia in 1998, the Italian youngster could not make much of an impact for Nerazzurri, making just 22 appearances and was loaned out twice between 1999 and 2001.

During his second loan spell at Brescia, however, manager Carlo Mazonne changed his position from Trequartista or attacking midfielder to Regista or deep-lying playmaker. Consequently, Pirlo was then playing behind Roberto Baggio, creating chances for the latter and dictating the pace of the game.

The move brought out the best in Pirlo. It was also testament to the tactical nous of Serie A, where managers are constantly on the lookout- more than in any other league- for new ideas to benefit the players and the team as a whole.

By the summer of 2001, Pirlo had signed for AC Milan. His replacement at Brescia? Pep Guardiola.

Scholes

The initial doubts over Scholes were entirely unrelated to his skills with a football- they usually revolved around his build. ‘Too small’ was the stock phrase for him at Manchester United, according to the then manager Sir Alex Ferguson.

The doubts were understandable, given the physical nature of the English Premier League. When Scholes progressed to play for the youth A team, he was a centre-forward and Sir Alex was convinced he had neither the pace nor the strength to play in that position.

The misgivings would ultimately prove to be unfounded, as Scholes used the running game of the Premier League to his advantage. As a centre forward, he would play in the hole behind the striker, provide link-up play and arrive in the box at the right time to sometimes even head goals in.

In doing so, he shattered the myth in many a British mind, no less in that of Sir Alex, that English football is only meant for the big and burly.

Playing position

Xavi signed off his decorated career at Barcelona with a Champions League title

The arrival of Dutch manager Frank Rijkaard meant that Xavi now played in a more advanced central midfield role to control the attacking tempo of Barcelona and deliver final-goal passes. Competition in midfield was stiff- Deco, Edgar Davids and Mark van Bommel were also on the team roster and usually all three started ahead of Xavi. Nevertheless, Xavi now enjoyed a bigger role in the team and was named vice-captain for the 2004/05 season.

It was the arrival of Pep Guardiola as first-team manager, though, that did justice to Xavi’s abilities. Playing on the right of a 3-man central midfield, Xavi epitomised the tiki-taka style of play adopted by Barcelona. His metronomic style of playmaking through constant short passing and movement led to him being nicknamed maqui (short for maquina or “machine”) by Guardiola and “reverse sheepdog” by football correspondent Graham Hunter.

While Xavi flourished in an advanced role, Pirlo revelled in a withdrawn one at AC Milan, under Carlo Ancelotti. Sitting at the base of a diamond midfield also comprising Gattuso, Seedorf and Rui Costa, Pirlo found the ideal position to display his playmaking abilities, away from the tough-tackling defensive midfielders and central defenders of Serie A. He was also simultaneously changing the perception of the deep-lying midfielder, who was earlier considered to have a primarily defensive role.

Now, nearly 20 years after his Serie A debut, managers in Italy are still working out ways to incorporate Pirlo in their team. Notable among these is the 3-1-4-2 formation of Antonio Conte, with Pirlo in a role akin to a quarter-back and three central defenders to provide him additional cover. Such tactical innovations, more than anything, show how much respect the Italian magician still commands in Italy despite his ageing legs.

How unfortunate is it, then, that Scholes never enjoyed such a status in England at the international level!

The “Ginger Ninja”, after his initial years as a centre forward, eventually settled a little deeper as a central midfielder in a classic English 4-4-2 formation of Manchester United, controlling the pace of attacks. He had an astute appreciation of the positioning of his teammates with a knack of being deadly in-front of goal. It is here that the influence of a footballing culture on a player becomes visible.

In Spain, the pre-dominant style of play of the national team is tiki-taka. In La Liga too, emphasis is more on what teams do with the ball. Defending more often involves intelligent pressing and forcing the opposition to give up possession rather than incessant running and sliding tackles.

In such a scenario, the ideal playmaker would be a player who could be an embodiment of tiki-taka, who could escape the pressing of the opposition and at the same time, exploit free spaces to move into as well as find teammates present in these spaces. In other words, the ideal playmaker would be Xavi.

Italy, on the other hand, is a footballing nation known for its tactics and defending. Scoring a goal in Serie A usually involves carrying out the manager’s plan to perfection, scoring from outside the box or scoring from a set-piece.

It is therefore, imperative that a playmaker in Italy is either a skillful, fleet-footed Trequartista who can escape tackles (a la Baggio) or a Regista who can find teammates from a withdrawn position far away from defenders. Pirlo possessed the skill-set for the latter and so, after an initial unsuccessful stint in advanced midfield, settled as a relegated playmaker.

Evolution of Scholes

It is the evolution of Scholes as a playmaker in England, however, which is particularly fascinating. The English version of football is fast and physical. Most of the attacking plays move out to the wings, where the no.7s and no.11s are expected to create chances, either for themselves or for strikers like Andy Carroll and Peter Crouch waiting in the box, while the central midfielders are supposed to be box-to-box players who aid both attack and defence. In Martin Demichelis’ words, English football is probably “inspired by rugby”.

Scholes had in spite of his physical drawbacks, carved out a niche for himself in the frenetic pace of the Premier League. He not only fulfilled the playmaking abilities required of him as a creative midfielder, but also certain characteristics essential to playing in central midfield in the Premier League, such as:

• - Turning up in the box at the right time to score from a cross
• - Scoring goals from long-range shots after an unsuccessful cross led to the ball falling outside the box in no man’s land
• - Playing box-to-box, screening the defence and aggressive tackling (even if the tackles were poor at times)
• In hindsight, it is a tragedy that a player of Scholes’ class was shunted out to the left wing in the England national team and subsequently called time on his international career at the age of 29 with just 66 appearances.
• If he’d been Italian, the whole team would have been built around him and, as Xavi himself said, “If he'd been Spanish he might have been rated more highly.”

• Brothers by nature

• 

  Scholes, Pirlo and Xavi are not very different though they play in different leagues

  Xavi- "That's what I do: look for spaces. All day. I'm always looking"

Pirlo- “I look for space so I can get the ball and then start to conduct the play. On the pitch, I’m a wandering gypsy.”

Gary Neville on Paul Scholes- “ He had eyes in the back of his head and a pass as accurate as a laser.”

They may have been born in different environments, but by nature, Xavi, Pirlo and Scholes were special footballers for the same reasons. They relied on intelligence and mastery of the ball amid the physicality of midfield and it always seemed as if they had an eternity on the ball.

It is only the different environments of their respective leagues that moulded them into different players- Xavi giving the ball and getting the ball constantly, Pirlo becoming a master of the long pass and free-kicks and Scholes becoming adept at arriving in the hole just outside the penalty box to score from long-shots.

In another universe, if Xavi were at Manchester United, Pirlo at Barcelona and Scholes in Italy, things would not be much different. Their personalities were similar too. Scholes described his ideal day as "train in the morning, pick up my children from school, play with them, have tea, put them to bed and then watch a bit of TV."

Xavi would go and pick setas (mushrooms) in the countryside whenever he had a day off while other players would be testing the speed limits with one of their 2,391 cars, Andrea Pirlo would be riding a rusted bicycle along the brick streets of a quiet beach town.

It seems unimaginable that a celebrity footballer would be living a life like this. But then ,maybe that’s the life you need to become a midfield maestro. As Brazilian great Scorates once said- “He who runs, doesn’t think... He who thinks, doesn’t run.”