Cristiano Ronaldo's enduring sway gives Juventus and Pirlo timely lift | Nicky Bandini


The pressure on Andrea Pirlo’s team to deliver in the Supercoppa had been intense. Juve’s talisman carried out the delivery

Andrea Pirlo used to love winding up Gennaro Gattuso. In his autobiography, the now Juventus manager described his former teammate as “my favourite target … despite the fact that he tried on numerous occasions to kill me with a fork”. Pirlo recalled bursting out of Gattuso’s wardrobe to scare him in the middle of the night and stealing his phone to message a Milan director with an offer to swap his sister for an improved contract.

It is one thing to tease, though, and another to defeat. If Pirlo derived any additional pleasure from claiming the first trophy of his managerial career at Gattuso’s expense on Wednesday night, then he did a good job of hiding it. “I feel sorry for him,” Pirlo confessed after steering Juventus to a 2-0 victory over Napoli in Italy’s Supercoppa. “But we are doing a different job now to the one that we had before. It was important for me to bring home the win.”

Related: Antonio Conte outsmarts Andrea Pirlo in great leap forward for Inter | Nicky Bandini

760 - Cristiano Ronaldo
759 - Josef Bican
757 - Pele
743 - Romario
719 - Lionel Messi

The record-breaking goal for CR7! pic.twitter.com/kivED5nB10

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