Sports at the age of 45
“End of an era” – Italy’s record goalkeeper Buffon resigns
As of: 5:29 p.m. | Reading time: 2 minutes
Gianluigi Buffon has announced his retirement
Source: dpa/Martin Rickett
He was one of the best goalkeepers of the past decades, now Gianluigi Buffon has retired. This was marked by many trophies – and an extraordinary gesture of solidarity.
Goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon has retired after almost three decades as a professional footballer – most of them at the top level. The 45-year-old confirmed his resignation on Wednesday with a short post on social media. “It ends here. you gave me everything I gave you everything We won together,” Buffon wrote on Instagram.
As early as Tuesday evening, Italian media reported that the record national player and world champion from 2006 would no longer fulfill his contract with second division club Parma Calcio, which actually ran until 2024.
A kiss for the World Cup: Gianluigi Buffon celebrates winning the 2006 World Cup with Italy
Source: AP/THOMAS KIENZLE
“He was the greatest”, wrote the “Gazzetta dello Sport”, the daily newspaper “Tuttosport” headlined: “Thank you Supergigi”. The Italian record champions Juventus Turin, for whom Buffon stood between the posts for a total of 19 years, wrote: “Today an era ends.”
Return to his youth club
Nothing was officially announced about Buffon’s future. According to media reports, the athlete, who was born in Carrara in Tuscany, could become the head of the national team’s delegation in the future. Former national striker Gianluca Vialli had last worked in this job before he died of cancer in early 2023.
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Buffon was one of the best goalkeepers of this millennium and a title collector. With Juve, he won the championship ten times, won the cup six times and reached the final of the Champions League three times – but it wasn’t quite enough for a triumph in Europe’s premier class. He showed an extraordinary sign of solidarity with the Turin team when he did not leave the club in 2006, despite being forced down due to referee manipulation, but instead went to Serie B as world champion.
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In 2019 he joined Paris Saint-Germain for a year before returning to Turin for two more seasons. In the summer of 2021, in the late autumn of his career, Buffon was hired again by his youth club Parma in the second division, where he played his first Serie A game in November 1995 as a 17-year-old. At that time, as a debutant, he held on to a 0-0 draw against the big AC Milan and established a unique career in which he played 176 international matches and drove to five world championships.
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