AC Milan and Italy legends Andrea Pirlo and Alessandro Nesta enjoyed many great moments together during their trophy-laden careers for club and country – but they shared some special memories of quite a different kind away from the pitch, too.
Rooming on away trips and international duty for a decade, it's fair to say Pirlo and Nesta got to know each other pretty well – and they bonded over one form of entertainment in particular: gaming.
As Pirlo revealed to FourFourTwo's Arthur Renard in an interview for the latest issue available to buy, the PlayStation became almost an obsession of theirs.
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Pirlo, who's currently head coach at Turkish Super Lig outfit Fatih Karagumruk, told FFT:
"We were room-mates with both the national team and Milan for 10 consecutive years, so we spent most of our time together. I was with him more than my own family; he was like a brother to me.
"We started playing PlayStation when Alessandro came to Milan. We love it; as soon as we were put in the same room, we would play all of the time: before and after training sessions and at training camps. It turned into a hobby, just to kill time, because we had fun and enjoyed doing it together. We would never play late into the night, though – only after a game where we would struggle to fall asleep, maybe.
So intense was Pirlo's PlayStation passion that he even used it to prepare for the biggest game of his life – the 2006 World Cup final against France – as he recounted in his autobiography:
"I don’t feel pressure... I don’t give a toss about it. I spent the afternoon of Sunday, July 9, 2006 in Berlin sleeping and playing the PlayStation. In the evening, I went out and won the World Cup.”
