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politicians. They don’t know what they’re talking about as they grab and stick their snouts in the trough. Nor did I experience the same emotion in the history books I’ve studied – perhaps because all too often I kept them closed and allowed the dust to build up. My parents were right when they said that was a big mistake.
    Never would I have thought that the instant before taking a penalty could open my mind so marvellously and give me this higher understanding. I saw the inner workings of a motor car that was imperfect, full of defects, badly driven, old and worn, and yet still utterly unique. Italy’s a country you love precisely because it’s like that.
    My penalty went in. Even if I’d missed, the lesson would have remained. Perhaps it would actually have been amplified by the resulting desperation. It’s incredible to know that what you’re feeling is shared by millions of people in the same way, at the same time, for the same reasons, in cities that moments before were rivals or at least too dissimilar to find any sort of common ground. That lukewarm shiver a second before I stuck the ball in the net is the most vivid sensation I’ve ever felt.
    We’d talk about those moments in the months afterwards. I soon discovered I wasn’t the only one who had come back from Germany with lofty topics of conversation.
    That penalty also helps define me. As usual, nobody will believe me but, in my own mind, I’m much more the Pirlo who stuck the ball down the middle at World Cup 2006 than the Pirlo of the inspired chip against England in the quarter-finals of Euro 2012. Even if the motivation was the same in both cases: selecting the best option to minimise the risk of error.
    To be clear, I didn’t do a Francesco Totti. Back at Euro 2000, against Holland, just before he went up to take his penalty he told Luigi Di Biagio and Paolo Maldini that he was going to chip the keeper. I made my decision right at the last second, when I saw Joe Hart, the England goalie, doing all sorts on his line. As I began my run-up, I still hadn’t decided what I was going to do. And then he moved and my mind was made up. It was all impromptu, not premeditated. The only way I could see of pushing my chances of scoring close to 100%. There was absolutely no showboating about it – that’s not my style.
    Many so-called experts perceived all manner of hidden meanings in that episode. A secret desire for revenge; something I’d practised again and again on the training pitch between games. Well, for one thing, we hardly trained at all towards the end of that tournament – the constant travelling between joint hosts Poland and Ukraine ate into our time and energy. And anyway, can you really plan something like that so far in advance? If you can, you’re either Totti, a clairvoyant or stupid.
    Nobody knew I was going to strike the ball like that, simply because I didn’t know myself. I’m aware that this explanation will make some people unhappy and make others seem like liars, but the fact is the truth’s a lot less romantic than how it may have looked. It was pure calculation that made me chip the ball. At that precise instant, it was the least dangerous thing to do. The safest and most productive option.
    In many people’s eyes, it was a nice way to win against opponents who had started out as favourites. A nice way to turn what had looked like defeat into victory and to go from almost being knocked out to qualifying for the semi-finals. But the whole thing came and went in a very short space of time, or at least it did for me; my team-mates declared themselves astonished and wanted to dig deeper.
    At first they congratulated me, and then immediately asked the question they all had in their heads. They were a children’s choir made up of adults who’d apparently lost their minds. Their doubt was almost existential: “Are you mad, Andrea?”
    They were amazed, but I was not. I knew why I’d done it. And for how many