Keep on Rising

The Juventus and Italy keeper is one of a rare breed: a player who started at the very top and then continued to rise

- Paddy Agnew

On the morning of November 19, 1995, Parma coach Nevio Scala knocked on the hotel-room door of 17-year-old keeper Gianluigi “Gigi” Buffon. It was the morning of Parma’s home game with the mighty Milan; a team that had wiped out Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona 4-0 a year earlier in the Champions League Final.

Scala’s first-choice keeper, Luca Bucci, was out injured for some weeks and the coach had been less than impressed by the performance of back-up

Alessandro Nista. He therefore pondered the idea of giving young Buffon his professional debut against one of the best club sides in the world at the time.

“I am thinking of playing you this afternoon against Milan. Is that any problem?” asked Scala.

“No problem,” came the immediate reply. And the rest is indeed history.

Like everybody else at Parma, Scala knew all about the youngster. Buffon had joined Parma four years earlier as a 13-year-old and had immediately impressed. When reserve keeper Nista first joined Parma, he phoned his agent after a couple of weeks and said to him: “What did you sign me up with this lot for? They have a phenomenal youth-team lad who is a much better keeper than me.”

With his first-choice out, Scala had drafted the young Buffon into the first-team squad as cover. And after watching him train for a week with such names as Fabio Cannavaro, Gianfranco Zola and, Hristo Stoichkov, he became convinced that the youngster was up to the task.

Which indeed he was, with his debut making him something of an overnight sensation in Italy.

It was not just that he made three spectacular saves – from Stefano Eranio, Roberto Baggio and Marco Simone – to earn a 0-0 home draw, it was also that he performed with a staggering sense of self-belief and security.