Buffon will bury emotion in pursuit of his ‘fairy tale’
Veteran aiming to cast aside fears this could be final shot at European Cup, writes Sam Wallace
Gianluigi Buffon accepted with good grace that at times his long and illustrious career was being talked about in the past tense, 22 years a professional footballer and all the trophies a man could ask for bar the one that is at stake in Cardiff tonight.
For the great goalkeeper of Italian football, speaking yesterday ahead of the Champions League final, the questions were naturally about whether, at 39, he would have another chance to win this trophy. Eight undisputed Serie A titles, a World Cup in 2006, 168 Italy caps, even a Uefa Cup with Parma in 1999 but never the biggest European club prize of all and while this has been one of the most remarkable careers of the modern era, it might yet have another chapter.
“This game is very important to me,” Buffon said, at his club’s last set-piece press briefing before the final against Real Madrid. “When I think about this long career, in which I have played many years I am grateful. It would be the perfect final [to win in Cardiff ] and people do like fairy tales.”
He is still not decided on whether this will be the end, and the likelihood is that he will play past his 40th birthday next January but whether he will play at this level again is debatable. He made a couple of strange decisions in the early stages of the semi-final second leg against Monaco before he settled down, and he spoke yesterday about how he copes with the pressure: “You do that by thinking about who you are and what you are capable of,” he said, “that enables you to relax.”
He was alongside Dani Alves, who could win the Champions League and European Cup for the fourth time, and who is regarded as the man who can give this experienced Juventus team the know-how to make the final step. Buffon joked when Alves joined last summer from Barcelona that he would be the man to change their fortunes and it turns out that he might just be right about the wing-back, outstanding in the semi-final second leg.
“He’s an optimist,” Buffon said of Alves. “He said, ‘I will make you win the Champions League’. I have to say that since he has been here, he has been a revelation for me. As a player we have all seen what he can do on the pitch. I was able to get to know him better and off the pitch there is a lot more to him.”
Alves is reputedly the player who has more victories over Real Madrid in his career than any other, with 22 in 42 games, and he is also poised to be the first three-time treble winner – domestic league and cup, as well as the Champions League in one season – if Juventus prevail in Cardiff. It is obvious why Juventus, with a record six defeats in European Cup finals, see him as a lucky charm as well as a key player against the Champions League’s dominant force in recent years.
Buffon was a team-mate of Zinedine Zidane at Juventus and he was part of the Italy team that denied the Frenchman his second World Cup in the final in Berlin in 2006, albeit after the latter was sent off. “He’s a winner,” Buffon said of the Real Madrid coach, “as a player he was a winner and he is a winner as a coach, but in life sometimes you lose. I hope he loses this one and, if he did, that wouldn’t change his outstanding career.”
Juventus manager Massimiliano Allegri was in his first season in charge of Juventus when they lost to Barcelona in the 2015 Champions League final, a very different time, he said, in the team’s development. “Perhaps then we didn’t feel confident because we had struggled in the Champions League in the years before. We didn’t end up in the final by chance but we didn’t expect to win. This year it is different. Juventus have improved a lot as a club.”
Buffon has stayed for so long that he has caught the tail end of the renaissance. “Dani has four or five years ahead of him,” he said. “I have to exclude that possibility. Yes, it will be much more special for me but at the same time I want to play without regret and without thinking of these issues. This is my moral imperative for this game. I hope I can manage to do it.”