BUFFON BOWS OUT

The iconic Italy goalkeeper finally hangs up his gloves after an extraordinary career

- Paddy Agnew

"It ends here. You have given me everything. I gave you my all. We won together".

With this brief post on Instagram in the first week of August, 45-year-old Gianluigi Buffon, a living legend of Italian football, finally announced the end of his playing career after almost 30 years. Writing in La Repubblica, veteran critic Maurizio Crosetti suggested that Buffon managed to avoid the only real "terror" of his football career. Namely, as the player himself put it: "That one day others would have to tell me to give up, rather [than making] this decision myself".

Appropriately enough, Buffon's stellar career ended where it had all begun, at Parma. It was back in November 1995 that the then-17-year-old reserve goalkeeper at the Stadio Ennio Tardini burst unexpectedly into the limelight, making his professional debut in a 0-0 home draw with the mighty Milan.

Coached by Fabio Capello and on the day starring players such as Paolo Maldini, Franco Baresi, Roberto Baggio, George Weah and Zvonimir Boban, that Milan side was one of the strongest teams in world club football at the time, the team that had emphatically beaten Spanish giants Barcelona 4-0 in the Champions League final in Athens just 18 months earlier. To ask a 17-year-old to make his professional debut against such a team was a big ask.

Parma's first-choice keeper, Luca Bucci, was injured, while second choice, Alessandro Nista, had looked less than impressive in training. Having drafted Buffon into the first-team squad when Bucci got injured, Parma's canny coach Nevio Scala had been much impressed by him during a week of training with team-mates such as Fabio Cannavaro, Gianfranco Zola and Hristo Stoichkov.

On the Saturday before the game, Scala knocked at Buffon's door in the team hotel: "I am thinking of playing you tomorrow against Milan. Is that a problem?"

"No problem," came the immediate reply.