Do we like Gianluigi Buffon?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent record and some real good, held back by one contested 1999 stunt and a fine for swearing on the pitch.
Gigi Buffon was born in Carrara, Tuscany, and made his Serie A debut for Parma at 17, in November 1995. He moved to Juventus for a record fee, won the 2006 World Cup with Italy, and stayed loyal when Juve were thrown into Serie B after Calciopoli. Then came a season at PSG before he finished his career back where it started.
Not everything was golden. In 1999 he turned up on Rai cameras with the slogan “Boia chi molla” scrawled on his shirt, a phrase Italian media call fascist, and the studio reportedly went quiet. Buffon's line was that he knew nothing about politics and just wanted to tell kids not to give up. In his book he says he lifted it from a carved boarding school desk at 13. No sanction was reported.
He was also caught in a 2006 betting probe. Buffon told prosecutors in Turin he had placed bets on Juventus games and stopped once the federation banned it, and the Turin prosecutor archived the case, clearing him. That is a long way from match-fixing, but it's a stain on the file all the same.
On the harm check, the record is thin in a good way: searching his name against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, vaccines and climate turned up no statements from him, and nothing on who he keeps working with that raises a flag. That's honestly the whole list. The shirt slogan is the one real question mark, and it's a 1999 incident he has explained rather than repeated.
Temper is the other theme. In December 2020 he was heard using a blasphemous expression at a teammate during a Parma match; the Italian federation fined him 5,000 euros but spared him a ban. That is a footballer shouting at a teammate, not a pattern of hurting people.
The recent news is a footnote to a long career. With Italy out of the 2026 World Cup, Buffon resigned as head of delegation, a job he took in August 2023, and said he felt able to do “the most responsible thing” once Gravina stepped down. He owned the failure rather than dodging it, which is more than many officials manage.