To Be Peerless: Giannis and Pirlo

With anticipation brewing over who will rise as the cream of the this year’s crop of Bucks, I thought it would be timely for an article about the likeliest candidate to emerge on top. Less timely is the inspiration for the article - a piece about soccer from about six months ago - but so it goes.

I’ve always been a fan of Rory Smith’s work. He writes with a classically give-and-take and characteristically British style, with a lot of easter eggs for those in the know. I encourage you to read his piece on Andrea Pirlo, the sublime Italian soccer star, in full, while acknowledging that a subscription is probably required. But I’ll also be excerpting it below.

The piece wormed its way into my…