I now love Andrea Pirlo.

In the heavily stage-­managed world of modern soccer, most autobiographies are not worth the ­paper they are printed on. But not the Italian's I Think Therefore I Play. In its pages, Pirlo is as graceful, cool and utterly devastating as he is on the pitch.

Pirlo pulls no punches. AC Milan's second-half performance in the 2005 Champions League final to Liverpool is described as "a mass suicide where we all joined hands and jumped off the Bosphorus Bridge."

He comes across as dry, revealing that at Inter his boss Roy Hodgson mispronounced his name "Pirla (Milanese for d**khead), perhaps understanding my true nature more than the other managers."

Pirlo's likeably patriotic. Telling of the seconds before his penalty against France in the 2006 World Cup Final he says, "I lifted my eyes to the heavens and asked for help because if God exists, there's no way he's French." Pirlo scored and Italy won the World Cup.

His time playing in the "Smurf-like blue" shirt of Italy means a lot. He says that being part of that team is "better than sex." To really make his point he adds, "Take someone like Antonio ­Cassano. He says he's slept with 700 women but he doesn't get picked for Italy any more. Can he really be happy? I wouldn't be."

Pirlo's turns of phrase are smoother than his switching of play. The Italian recalls Park ­Ji-sung man-marking him in the Champions League as the Korean rushing about "at the speed of an electron" who would "look at the ball and not know what it was for."

He's also willing to break the omerta of the dressing room. Pirlo tells of Milan captain Gennaro Gattuso's temper in the canteen. He writes that "some of us ended up missing games because of one of Rino's fork attacks, even if the official explanation from the club was one of muscle fatigue."

Pirlo is a man of strong opinions and he is willing to share them.  "One part of my job I'll never learn to love is the pre-match warm-up," he says. "I hate it with every fiber of my being. It actually disgusts me. It's nothing but masturbation for conditioning coaches."

Perhaps Pirlo's most-telling quote is one of his shortest. "I wouldn't bet a cent on me becoming a manager," he writes. That's a shame. Based on his skills as a player, the trophies he has won and the way he comes across in his autobiography, Andrea Pirlo should make an excellent coach. 

The same could be said of Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville but they've become pundits and improved English soccer no end.

I guess I should start learning Italian.

The author is an editor with the Global Times. jonathanwhite@globaltimes.com.cn