Andrea Pirlo wrote about how he hates the tradition of pre-match warm-ups in his autobiography.
"One part of my job I'll never learn to love is the pre-match warm-up," Pirlo writes in his autobiography. "I hate it with every fibre of my being. It actually disgusts me. It's nothing but masturbation for conditioning coaches, their way of enjoying themselves at the players' expense."
On scoring the penalty in the World Cup final shoot-out in 2006, Pirlo says: "I lifted my eyes to the heavens and asked for help because if God exists, there's no way he's French."
Via Michael Cox/ESPN