Gigi Buffon towards retirement, says no to 30 million from Arabia-Corriere.it

Wild and sentimental, too the eternal football of Gigi Buffon it is about to end or at least to change shape. Someone could argue that it has already finished for a while, that seventeen appearances in the last season of B and the playoffs lost with Cagliari are proof that this has been the classic year too many for the best goalkeeper ever, 45 years old on 28 January .

But these are categories and reasoning that do not apply to Buffon, after all, he has just rejected a thirty million offer from Arabia with clenched fistswho does not deny himself to anyone, let alone an icon like him, who however wants to be closer to his family, his four children and his partner Ilaria D’Amico.

If anything, the disappointment for not having brought his Parma back to Serie A weighs heavily, as promised, the only gripe that would still give him the mental energy to continue. The decision to retire has not yet been taken, but the most probable (we are about 80% by the hand), there is still a reserve to be resolved within this week, some questions to be answered, also on physical fitness, after a season punctuated by muscle trouble. Gigione has a contract with the yellow and blues that expires in June 2024, but president Krause is a friend and would immediately take him to the club, skipping the line, which promises to be long. Even if someone like Buffon doesn’t want to be an image man or bait and switch. There is still time to think about the eventual aftermath, which will come sooner or later: Juve, the national team, Parma and (only in part) PSG were the galaxy around which the planet Buffon gravitated, embracing almost everything Italian football, to the sound of records, such as that of unbeaten in Serie A (975 ‘) and appearances in blue (176). But it is also true that – yesterday as today – Gigi doesn’t make everyone agree, due to his past mistakes, certain youthful sins or over the top declarations. But almost all off-field material, because between the posts a goalkeeper who has committed fewer missteps than him for over twenty-five years of career is impossible to find.

Buffon didn’t revolutionize the trade like Jascin, the only Ballon d’Or goalkeeper or Neuer, the only one who really undermined Super Gigi for the way he paved the way for the modern interpretation of the role. Gigi is the prototype of the Goalkeeper, not the one who leaves the area with his foot or restarts the action with the perfect throw, but the one who is always in the right place at the right time: (he was) the custodian of the purest and most enduring talent in the role of the entire multi-centennial history of football. Because there have been several numbers one stronger than Buffon, even among those of the various generations that he himself has gone through, but none lasted at the highest level like him. And the quantity, if combined with a lot of quality, has its weight.

Gigione is also the last of the blue giants still in business, but almost seventeen years have passed since that magical night in Berlin 2006 and perhaps the moment to close the circle has really arrived. Even if the scar of the failure to qualify for Russia 2018 still burns and will always burn: the one against Sweden at the San Siro, closed in tears, was the penultimate match for the national team for Buffon, before his farewell with Argentina under the short management By Biagio. Then something broke, maybe not everyone understood Gigi and maybe he didn’t understand everything. It will happen even now, if he continues to play. A little less, if he stops, opening the door between news and legend.