It is the end of an era, the curtain has come down on one the most important stories in the history of Italian football, superior even to that of the icon Dino Zoff.
Gianluigi Buffon has decided to stop playing football and turn his back on goalkeeping after a 28 year professional career.
Buffon made his debut for Parma on 19 November, 1995 at the age of 17 due to an injury to Parma’s starting goalkeeper Luca Bucci. He kept a clean sheet in a 0-0 draw against a legendary AC Milan side and made great saves from Ballon d’Or winners Roberto Baggio and George Weah.
The major turning point in his career took place two years later when he hypnotized Ronaldo. In 1997, during a Parma-Inter match, Buffon saved a penalty from the Brazilian striker before showing the fans a Superman shirt – he has had this nickname ever since.
Real Madrid boss Carlo Ancelotti, who managed Buffon between 1996 and 1998 at Parma, described his former goalkeeper as an ‘alien’ after news of his retirement went public.
Gianluigi Buffon won 29 trophies throughout his illustrious playing career
The goalkeeper’s crowning moment came in 2006, when he won the World Cup with Italy
Buffon continued to play at the top level of European football into his forties before returning to his first club Parma in 2021
Buffon revolutionized the goalkeeper’s role, changing it forever, despite not having refined feet like AC Milan’s Nelson Dida.
He showed such technical excellence in making extraordinary saves and putting in performances that defied all rational logic that it hid his biggest flaw: his quality in handling the ball.
He was so important to Italian football that only in many years will his contribution be truly acknowledged.
Buffon understood that he had to surrender to his advancing years, leaving room for younger goalkeepers. He recognised that he was no longer able to compete at the highest level and that he had to find a second career, potentially following in the foot steps of as Chief of Delegation within the Italian national team.
The World Cup winner has ended his career in Parma and wants to start a new era of professional life without abandoning his family, as happened in the period he played for Paris Saint-Germain in France.
If he had accepted an offer from the Saudi League, Buffon would have earned many millions of euros but he would have also lost the opportunity to have a peaceful life raising his children.
After almost three decades in football, 932 matches and 29 trophies Buffon has finally chosen to enjoy some time with his family, giving up the last year of his contract with Parma and the offer from Saudi Arabia seems to be a golden prison in which he does not want to be locked up.
During his career, the goalkeeper kept 322 clean sheets for Juventus and set an incomparable statistical record. Buffon has realized that he can no longer improve his professional legacy and wants to be ready to change his life.
During his time at Parma, Buffon won the UEFA Cup in 1999, later moving on to Juventus where he won 10 Scudetti, 1 Serie B Scudetto, 6 Italian Cups and 7 Italian Super Cups. With PSG he won both Ligue 1 and the French Super Cup.
Buffon made his name at Parma in the late 1990’s, winning the UEFA Cup in the 1998-99 season
He would go on to become a legend at Juventus, keeping 322 clean sheets and winning 10 Serie A titles
His greatest triumph was winning the World Cup with Italy in 2006. A victory that put him on the same level as Zoff and transformed him into the greatest goalkeeper in football history.
He went on to become the record holder for appearances with the Italian national team with 176 caps, 80 of which he won as captain.
In over 25 years of football Buffon has been loved by all fans, in every corner of the globe, for his skill and sympathy. In his career he has won everything except the Champions League and he can be proud of having beaten depression.
His love for football is immense but he has chosen to put his gloves in the locker, surrendering to the passage of time that has begun to creak his steely muscles.
Losing Buffon, even though he dropped to Serie B for his final two years, closes forever a glorious chapter for the national team. Super Gigi was in fact the last player who took part in that 2006 World Cup win to still be in business.
Buffon has no heirs, at the moment there is no Italian goalkeeper capable of taking up his legacy. He is an icon, a flagbearer for Italian football that is impossible to forget and has not yet been remotely emulated.
The level of the former Juventus goalkeeper is unattainable for Gianluigi Donnarumma, struggling with a profound identity crisis in Paris, and both Alex Meret and Ivan Provedel appear to be good goalkeepers but incapable of having even a third of the career of the number 1 born in Carrara.
His retirement from football opens an unbridgeable chasm that exposes all of the fundamental problems that have prevented the Italian national team from reaching the last two World Cups.
Italy is losing a charismatic leader who has brought young people closer to football and in all these years the ‘Belpaese’ football movement has failed to produce an heir.
The Italian national team have struggled to find a replacement for Buffon since his international retirement in 2018
There has been a growth in Serie A’s top clubs using foreign goalkeepers such as Wojciech Szczęsny, Rui Patricio and Mike Maignan, demonstrating how the quality of Italian number 1s has been in a deep crisis for some time.
Suffice to say, Donnarumma, the goalkeeper of Roberto Mancini’s national team, plays in France and not in Italy.
Buffon’s season ended with a defeat in the Serie B playoffs with Parma, a final pain that changed his future forever.
The disappointment of not being promoted to Serie A has created many existential doubts in the goalkeeper and today he finally seems ready to change his life.