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.
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.”
