I was considering taking him later, but he's just too old to be taken this early IMO. I'd love it if he proves me wrong, but I reckon he's one of the reasons Italy is struggling to move on.
I agree It isn't just him it's the 10 or so blokes they include in a squad of 18 or whatever who are all over 30 tbph I'd name them but for the purposes of the draft I wont I sure you'll know who I am talking about anyway majority of them are heading downhill. Pirlo is still a brilliant player and seeing the majority of CM already gone Pirlo would sit into the holding role well imo.
I just don't think he'll get through enough defensive work. He never did that much to start with, but now that he's aging it's become even less. His team-mates can only cover so much, and I doubt many people here are considering playing with two deep-lying midfielders. I was only considering him because I already had Alonso and Essien.
I wanted to initially play 2 deep-lying mids, im swaying away from it now. I was going to play it in the last draft, IIRC.
Agree so much the fact he was always paired with one of 2 other Italians at AC in the CMs who do a **** load of D work made his Work Rate look alot better than it actually is. Also depends on your formation as to how well he'd work I was actually going to use him as a holding for his passing rather than defense seeing as I'm going with 5 backs.
Since you guys are talking about tactics now, I'll post up how I want tactics to be submitted so you can see what you can and can't change.
Hopefully you can do stuff like give creative freedom to players, because then you'll all eat your words when Ronaldinho starts setting up 10 goals a game.