Happy birthday, Andrea Pirlo.Today marks the day that one of the greatest midfielders in the history of men's football blows out 43 candles on his birthday cake - and it's only natural that we join in the celebrations.Pirlo is part of a unique group of football players where their achievements and statistics in the game are, in a way, immaterial compared to the sheer joy of just watching them play the sport.

The majesty of Pirlo

Yes, he played for Inter Milan, AC Milan and Juventus and yes, he won the World Cup and Champions League, but does that really match up to basking in Pirlo swanning around midfield?

The answer, in case you're wondering, is an emphatic 'no', because the brilliance of the Italian maestro came in his ability to dictate a game of football like it was the easiest thing in the world.

Such was his sheer mastery of the beautiful game that a combination of his pitch-perfect technique and computer-like footballing brain that orchestrating a match didn't even really make him sweat.

How many times would you see Pirlo hurdling tackles, pinging diagonal balls, slaloming past defenders and stroking free-kicks over the wall at the pace of your average Sunday stroll?

It's the same quality that you saw in players like, say, Dimitar Berbatov in the sheer intelligence of their play seeming to slow the world down around them.

Football - Germany v Italy - UEFA EURO 2012 Semi Final - National Stadium, Warsaw, Poland - 28/6/12

Germany's Sami Khedira (top) and Italy's Andrea Pirlo in action

Mandatory Credit: Action Images / Lee Smith

Montage of Pirlo being 'immune to pressure'

But before we truly fall head over heels in our admiration for Pirlo's footballing class, we've got to hold our hands up and say that no description of his magnificence could ever truly do it justice.

As such, we couldn't help casting our minds back to a beautiful compilation that summed up exactly the point we're trying to make about Pirlo playing football at his own pace and nobody else's.

That's because a 2020 montage of his sensational performances at Euro 2012 showed exactly how - in the words of Premier Sports - the man himself is simply 'immune to pressure'. Check it out below:

It's just magic, isn't it? Someone lay classical music over that.

Pirlo doesn't feel pressure

And it's not an optical illusion either because Pirlo himself makes no secret of being, well, so darn relaxed and that was even the case before the biggest game of his life: the 2006 World Cup final.

Per Goal, the former Juventus manager said: “I don’t feel pressure. I don’t give a toss about it. I spent the afternoon of Sunday, 9 July, 2006 in Berlin sleeping and playing the PlayStation. In the evening, I went out and won the World Cup.”

If that's not coolness personified, then we don't know what is. We bet he's blowing out the candles on his birthday cake right now with the slow, sensual and classy whistle of a summer's breeze.

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Ok, we'll stop it now...