"No other act in sport is fraught with tension in quite the same way as a soccer penalty kick, which offers little metaphorical subtlety: the taker is literally put on the spot. Pirlo, for his part, walked to that spot on Sunday in Kiev slow and bored and impassive, like a husband at the mall. Pirlo stepped to the ball, came nearly to a full stop, then chipped it softly toward the center of the goal, as if gently kicking off a slipper before bed. The Pirlo penno was so slow in real time that slow motion replay reduced it to Zapruderesque speed, giving it greater gravitas, as Pirlo’s Prell-commercial hair flounced and shone beneath the stadium lights. The ball, making barely perceptible progress toward goal, begged for its own NFL Films close-up and John Facenda voiceover."

"… in the 2006 World Cup final, his made penalty helped Italy beat France in a shootout. Pirlo was named third best player of that World Cup, for which FIFA awarded him a Bronze Ball, giving him three in total, if you count the pair he was born with."