Gianluigi Buffon

About Gianluigi Buffon

Gianluigi Buffon ended where he began, in the yellow and blue of Parma, almost three decades after first pulling on their goalkeeper's jersey. Born in January 1978 in Tuscany, he made his Serie A debut for Parma as a seventeen-year-old in 1995, and within a couple of seasons the club had a teenage goalkeeper who looked ready for the biggest stage. Parma in the late 1990s was one of the strongest sides in Italy, and Buffon grew up behind a famous defence, winning silverware and becoming the national team's goalkeeper of the future.

In 2001 Juventus paid a headline-making sum to take him north to Turin, and the city became his home for seventeen years. It was a statement that a goalkeeper could be the centrepiece of a project, not an afterthought. What stands out about that spell is not just the length but the moment in the middle of it. When Juventus were relegated to Serie B in 2006 in the wake of the Calciopoli scandal, Buffon, by then a world champion, chose to stay and play in the second division. That is why Serie B is part of his career, and why the bond with Juventus supporters became so deep.

The world title had come in the summer of 2006 in Germany, where Italy won the tournament with Buffon in goal and his performances counted among the best of the competition. He would go on to earn a huge number of caps and play at several World Cups, making him one of the faces of Italian football for close to twenty years.

Back in Serie A, Juventus rebuilt and began a long run of consecutive league titles in the 2010s, with Buffon as captain. The one honour that escaped him throughout was the Champions League, in which he reached the final more than once without lifting the trophy.

In 2018 he finally tried something different. He spent a season at Paris Saint-Germain, his only experience outside Italy and his only spell in Ligue 1. One year later he returned to Juventus for a further two seasons, now more often as a respected deputy than as the automatic starter.

The final chapter was the most sentimental. In 2021 he went back to Parma, by then in Serie B, and played there until retiring in 2023, well into his forties. Few goalkeepers have stayed at the top level for so long, and fewer still have closed the loop so neatly. His style was rarely flashy: excellent positioning, explosive reflexes and a commanding voice that organised everyone in front of him. Generations of young Italian keepers grew up copying the way he came off his line and filled the goal.