Player Review

I spent the morning of Sunday 17 November 2019 sleeping and playing Fifa, and in the evening I wrote this review.

I’ve been looking forward to playing with Pirlos icon card since Fifa 18 when his end of an era card pulled the strings in my squad and fed SBC Giovinco and that infamous IF Alessandrini with perfect through balls. I wasn’t very interested in any of the other icon swaps alternatives, and 14 tokens in total seemed like a reasonable grind. This weekend was the first one where Pirlo got to be a crucial part of my weekend league squad that actually carried me to my first ever Gold 1 finish!

Pirlo immediately found his place in the starting eleven at left CDM in a 4231 alongside IF Doucoure, whom I upgraded to Kante halfway through the weekend. Pirlo was given balanced instructions and worked as a deep-lying playmaker, much like the regista role he played at Milan and Juventus.

I opted for a Guardian chemistry style which I thought would suit him for the role I was about to play him in. Shooting seemed irrelevant, passing is close to flawless and his physical stats are so poor that no chemistry style would fix that. Guardian boosts his dribbling quite nicely and makes him feel extremely smooth and composed on the ball, while also boosting his defensive awareness to 90 plus 82 interceptions. Shadow would have been relevant as well, but we all know how difficult those are to obtain.

Strengths:

Pirlo is insane on the ball. Without any chemistry style boosts he still has 93 ball control, 91 dribbling, 93 vision and short passing, 92 long passing and 96 composure. Even in the tightest weekend league games Pirlo is calm as a hindu cow and always available for a pass. Even though his pace is average he has the ability to beat his man in 1v1 situations, the 5* skill moves are of course helpful.

Weaknesses:

The 70 pace in combination with 66 defending and 64 physical is probably a turn off for many players and to be fair Pirlo requires a special position, style and players around him to work perfectly. He is not the sweaty Kante/Allan/Fabinho META player with the capabilities many players look for in their midfielders. I’m not mad about it, Pirlo was never that kind of player in real life either. In my opinion he is decent enough in most areas, but to be honest he does’t quite fit the META.

Conclusion:

”Football is played with the head, your legs are just the tools”. Pirlo is in my opinion a very fun player to use in the midfield if you like to play creative possession based football. For me he works best as a central midfielder where he can be as involved as possible, preferably paired with a good defensive midfielder like Kante. I’ve seen reviews where he is played at CAM and the 5* skills being utilized like he was Neymar and to be honest I don’t think anyone will enjoy him in that role. Play him in midfield and enjoy those amazing passing skills. I honestly believe that the rest of my team plays better when ”The Metronome” is pulling the strings in midfield. Will he be in my squad until TOTS? Highly unlikely, and for that reason Rio or Zanetti would probably have been better choices in terms of competitiveness, but playing with Pirlo made this game slightly more enjoyable, which is much needed with the state this game is in right now.