“Shall we say as sporting director? Manager? I’ll put the question mark, again. I certainly want to be operational, I don’t like being passive.” Gianluigi Buffon his future is not yet clear, after a very long career as the best goalkeeper in the world and the first adventure after hanging up his gloves, that of head of the Italian national team delegation which he is still carrying out. The 2006 world champion added: “For me, post-football is manifesting itself with the enthusiasm I imagined and sometimes with melancholy. They are inevitable, after the years we have lived. We must not abjure our past: it must be remembered, it is something important. But the truth is that the projection must always be positive, on the present and the future.”
The past linked to the market, waste and the double no to Rome.
First Parma, then Juventus, a year at Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus again and closure again at Parma. A career made up of many successes, crowned with the victory of the World Cup, but which could also have gone differently, thinking about the transfer market, as Buffon himself stated: “In 2001, from Parma, I had almost done with Roma. It was a question of details Then also with Barcelona. In the end I went to Juve. Then in 2005 there was a huge foreign club that wanted me, but in 2011 I was going to Roma again , I liked him and something had broken with Juve. But then Conte arrived and imposed my presence. When I returned to Juve from PSG I had already seen the flights, the city I was very close to Atalanta. They knew me like the back of their hand at Juve: I was there, Paratici, Pirlo came knowing that you were there… What could I answer him?”.
Thoughts on Cassano.
Finally, Buffon’s words on Antonio Cassano, his teammate in the national team: “Antonio was born a champion and always has been. Together we played in the European Championships, a World Cup, we had a blast. But in the end I told him: Anto’, luckily which only lasts a month, keeping yourself like this for a year… I only experienced the beautiful part of Antonio. Then clearly there was something that came out, you had to give it to him, you can’t always repress everyone, follow a decalogue”.