Former Old Trafford legend Park Ji-Sung pays his respects to retiring Andrea Pirlo

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London, Oct 16: One of the greatest Asian player to play in the Premier League, former Manchester United midfielder Park Ji sung has suggested that retiring Italy Legend Andrea Pirlo was one of the finest midfielders of his time to grace the field.

The Former Milan and Juventus midfielder has recently declared that he will call time on his playing career at the end of his New York City contract where he moved on as a free transfer two years back after his spells at Juventus.

Pirlo's whole career is filled up with silverware with spells at Inter Milan, AC Milan and Juventus, where the 38-year-old won the Serie A title on six occasions in total, while he won the Champions League twice with AC Milan and the World Cup once with Italy.

Park who played against the midfielder twice when they represented United and AC Milan respectively while talking about the Italy midfielder claimed that he doesn't think there was anyone better than him about that time of the game.

Speaking to Goal, he said: "He was not a big player physically, but his ability in passing, taking free-kicks, shooting from distance, play-making was the best in the world at that time.

"I believe he was a great player who could dictate the game. He was the biggest threat to any team who played against his team."

In the 2010 Champions League last 16 tie against AC Milan, Park was given the duty to man mark the midfielder by Sir Alex Ferguson which the midfielder clearly did and in both the legs Park neutralised the Milan team and received accolades from all over the world for his display as Manchester United edged past Milan in 7-2 aggregate.

And talking about the match Park added: "I tried to block him so that he cannot be in possession of the ball. When he had the ball, I tried to prevent him passing the ball in front of him.

"To mark Pirlo was not easy. It was hard mentally, physically but consequently, Milan had a difficult game against us."

Park hung up his boots in 2014 and currently works as a club ambassador at Manchester United.