Gianluigi Buffon of Italy sings with the fans during the World Cup 2006 final football game Italy ... [+]
It was the decision that melted a million hearts, but one most knew was closer to the present than the future. Italy, Juventus, Parma and football legend Gianluigi Buffon has decided to call it a day. The 45-year-old announced the curtain was finally falling on his illustrious and trophy-filled career that began on that famous sunny-but-chilly day at the Stadio Ennio Tardini in November 1995.
Buffon had been playing out the final years of his career at the club where it all started, Parma, rejoining the club in the summer of 2021. Buffon’s aim was to guide the Gialloblu back into Serie A after Parma suffered relegation from the Italian top flight in the 2020/21 season. Ultimately, Buffon failed as they finished 12th and 4th – but losing in the Serie B playoffs – in his two seasons.
It wasn’t the fairytale ending he would’ve wanted, yet there can hardly be any doubt whatsoever that his legacy, both at Parma and within the game, hadn’t been secured long ago. Such has been the longevity of Buffon’s career at the very highest level that when he began his career, Diego Maradona was still playing in Argentina and the original Sony PlayStation had only been released in Europe six weeks prior. Furthermore, the first season of MLS was still six months away when the 17-year-old Buffon denied chances from Milan’s Roberto Baggio and Marco Simone on that Sunday in November ’95.
In his 28-year career, Buffon won 10 Serie A titles (12 if counting the two revoked by Calciopoli), the 2006 World Cup, the 1999 UEFA
While the tired argument of who is the ‘greatest player of all-time’ will continue ad nausea until the end of time, it’s been simplified down to three options at this stage: Pele, Maradona and Lionel Messi. Cases can be made for all three and the argument for each is strong. Yet when it comes to naming the greatest goalkeeper, Buffon is only the choice.
Yes, other goalkeepers have won more down the years, but none have stayed atop the football pyramid for quite as long as Buffon and remained at a consistently high level. Buffon started his career when goalkeepers such as Peter Schmeichel, Angelo Peruzzi and Gianluca Pagliuca were in their prime, then rose alongside the likes of Iker Casillas and Olivier Kahn to become the best in the world. The best goalkeeper in the world by the time Juventus broke the transfer record for a goalkeeper to sign him in the summer of 2001, Buffon saw off flash-in-the-pan contenders to his throne like Dida, Petr Cech and Jens Lehman in the mid-2000s and Julio Cesar by the end of the decade. Even Casillas, who was three years younger, couldn’t keep apace with Buffon’s excellence. The Spaniard’s decline coming at lightening speed at the turn of the 2010s amid his fallout with Jose Mourinho at Real Madrid.
Even with the emergence of Manuel Neuer and the era of the ‘sweeper keeper’, Buffon adapted and while he was never brilliant with his feet in the way Neuer, Alisson, Marc ter Stegen and later Ederson were, he more than held his own in the new world.
Buffon only got better as he aged. He won Uefa Goalkeeper of the Year at the age of 39 as Juve reached their second Champions League final in three years. This is what ultimately sets him apart from everyone else; being the best in the world a few years is one thing, but to be in the conversation for two plus decades, to bridge generations and adapting to the evolution of the game with consummate ease is unparalleled in the history of the sport. The expected decline like Casillas never happened to Buffon. Even last season, he was displaying ridiculous reflexes at San Siro against Inter in the Coppa Italia.
Buffon had a tendency to leave his most iconic saves until finals: the diving header from Pippo Inzaghi in the 2003 Champions League showpiece at Old Trafford; the towering header from Zinedine Zidane in Berlin in 2006; the outstretched arm to deny Dani Alves in the 2015 Champions League final in the same city when Buffon had already committed to going the other way. Buffon always delivered when it mattered.
Yet beneath the Superman veneer, there was a fragility to Buffon. Admirably, he was one of football’s first superstars to speak openly and honestly about mental health, years before anyone else. Buffon admitted to going through a period of depression in the 2000s – believed to be somewhere between 2003 and 2004 – when he was at the top of the sport.
"For a few months, everything just stopped making sense," Buffon told Vanity Fair. "It seemed like no one cared about me, just the footballer I represented.
"It was like everyone was asking about Buffon and nobody about Gigi. It was a really difficult moment.
"I was 25, riding the wave of success but one day, before a Serie A match, I went to Ivano Bordon, the goalkeeper coach, and told him: 'Ivano, get [No. 2 goalkeeper Antonio] Chimenti to warm up and play. I'm not feeling up to it.
"I had suffered a panic attack and was in no state to play the match."
Buffon did have his moments of seeing red, such as the Michael Oliver incident in 2018 for which he’s never fully apologised. Yet that aside, he’s regarded as one of the classiest players of the modern game: Buffon’s gesture to Roy Keane and Martin O’Neill in the immediate seconds after Ireland beat Italy 1-0 in the final group stage game of Euro 2016 won’t be forgotten by Irish fans; Buffon recalled laughing with Cristiano Ronaldo minutes after he that scored that bicycle kick in Turin because, what else was there to do?
Homages poured in from players throughout Buffon’s career: Kylian Mbappe, Alessandro Del Piero, Juan Sebastian Veron, Paulo Dybala, Christian Vieri, Claudio Marchisio, Leonardo Bonucci and countless others. Buffon’s career was so long that naming all the players who paid tribute would be an article in itself.
Fabio Cannavaro referred to Buffon as the ‘Maradona of goalkeepers’, while Fabio Capello, a man notoriously hard to please, stated once that if he had to make two teams full of the best players he ever coached, Buffon would be the only one to make both. No goalkeeper has come as close in emulating the great Lev Yashin in winning the Ballon d’Or as Buffon, finishing second on the podium in 2006.
Not bad for a player who was a midfielder up to the age of 13.
