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England chief Roy Hodgson last night maintained he never mistakenly called Italy star Andrea Pirlo a “dickhead”.

In his recent autobiography, Pirlo claimed Hodgson used to call him “Pirla”, which translates as the derogatory term, when he was his boss at Inter Milan in 1999.

The Three Lions' manager, though, insisted ahead of Saturday's World Cup 2014 opener between the two nations: “I think he may have used a bit of poetic licence there. I called him Andrea, for the most part. I never use surnames.

“I don’t ever remember referring to him as Pirla – I’m a Christian-name person. Maybe they sound similar –but certainly he was anything other than a ‘pirla’!”

Hodgson added: “I felt a bit sorry for him. He hadn’t played much when I came because the squad was full of No.10s, Roberto Baggio, Youri Djorkaeff, Roberto Ze Elias and some others, all vying with Paulo Sousa for the same position.

“So he didn’t play that much but I thought he was very good in training, and Carlo Ancelloti showed a stroke of genius with regard to his career when Inter let him go to Milan and transformed him into a deep-lying midfield player.”