LONDON — For Andrea Pirlo, it was the satisfaction of a free kick, sweetly struck, sweeping “a couple of centimeters over” a defender’s head, beyond the goalkeeper’s despairing reach, whistling into the corner of the goal. There could be, he wrote in his autobiography, “no greater feeling in life.”

Dennis Bergkamp felt the same way about the perfect touch. He did not remember his most iconic moments — for the Netherlands against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup, his masterpieces against Leicester City and Newcastle for Arsenal — as goals, he said, but because of what happened a beat before, when he had cast a spell over the ball.

The goal was the consequence; the touch was the cause. In Bergkamp’s mind, that was what should be celebrated. That was what he remembered.

It is the sort of question that tends to be asked only of creative players, those who have not just excelled at the business of soccer — scoring goals and winning games — but have mastered the craft of it, elevated it into an art form: What is it that brings you most pleasure? Transient success, or something higher?