I Think Therefore I Play by Andrea Pirlo, Alessandro Alciato

intestinal one, most likely.
    We tried everything to steal the last two from him, but never had any joy. He guarded them jealously, as selfish with his snacks as he was when it came to passing the ball. “I’m doing it for your own good, boys. You need my goals.”
    There was the same self-enforced monotony about the other things he ate. Plain pasta with a little bit of tomato sauce and cured beef for lunch. Plain pasta with a little bit of tomato sauce and cured beef for dinner. That was his lifelong menu. He behaved in the same way at the table as he did in the opposition penalty box. Always doing the same thing, without any great imagination or flair, but with maximum efficiency.
    At meal times, he’d sit and wait for the waiter to bring the dishes, almost as if he wanted to be spoon-fed. During games, he’d sit and wait for the ball to somehow bounce off him and end up in the net.
    And he’d always have on the same pair of boots. They were good for all seasons and he cherished them with a rather suspicious level of devotion. Over the years I’ve realised that all forwards are fetishists. Pippo’s boots didn’t have any magic fluid, but they did have loads of patches. Like Gilardino’s, they dated back to the dawn of time, but there was a clear difference in the outlook of the respective owners.
    “I’m well aware these boots are destroyed, but I’m going to keep playing in them,” Pippo would say. “Nobody’s ever going to change my mind. These are the only soft ones going.”
    “What are you on about?” we’d ask. “All boots that professional players use are soft.”
    “Nope, you’re wrong. Only these ones are.”
    He was completely crazy but harmless. A really nice fruitcake, if you like.
    Sebastiano Rossi 37 wasn’t much better (or worse, depending on how you look at it). He was a great big bear of a goalkeeper, over two metres tall and with a truly inexplicable obsession. When the team warmed up before a game, nobody could walk behind him. Under his strict house rules it was absolutely prohibited. “It’s bad luck: you’d be as well sticking an own goal past me right now,” he’d say.
    Everyone at Milan knew about this quirk, but we weren’t about to let on to our opponents. Guys like Angelo Peruzzi, 38 his fellow keeper who happened to be playing at our ground one day. Now, at the San Siro there’s a little gym where both teams warm up. Rossi was busy doing an exercise with our trainer and had his back glued to his favourite wall. It so happened that he dropped a ball and had to take a couple of steps forward to retrieve it. At that precise moment, he saw Peruzzi coming over. Walking quite calmly, headed straight for him.
    Rossi instantly abandoned what he was doing and, to stop Peruzzi in his tracks, wedged himself between him and the wall. We all heard the commotion, followed by these words: “Get out of here, this is private property. Nobody walks behind me.” It was as if he’d stuck up one of those signs you see with a picture of a dog with a line through it, replacing the face with that of Peruzzi.
    There wasn’t a scene purely because Peruzzi knew you don’t attack crazy people. You smile, nod and agree.
    “Seba, you could have hurt him,” we said.
    “Pity I didn’t,” came the reply.
    In the dressing room, he’d commandeer all the scissors used to cut the tape that goes over your socks and shin guards. He absolutely had to be the first person to use them. Only after he’d finished were the rest of us allowed a shot.
    “If we change this routine, we’ll end up jinxed.”
    Whenever he said that, I followed the old custom of touching my balls, just in case for once in his life he was right.
    Back in my Reggina days, the man to keep an eye on was Paolo Foglio. 39 He couldn’t sleep unless he’d balanced his trainers against the wall, one on top of the other with the toes pointing down. A real feat of geometry.
    It was funny to watch these guys tackling their various