“I tear the gloves off my hands and my bare knuckles, reddened and soaked with sweat, shine in the neon light,” Gianluigi Buffon writes when he remembers leaving the pitch at half-time during the final game of his remarkable career, in May 2023. “I really feel dead inside. I am 45 years old, and around me many of my teammates walking in shorts towards the dressing room could easily be my children.”

The gripping and intimate tone of Buffon’s book, Saved, which opens with his last-ever game in a Serie B playoff for Parma, is matched by his warm and open character. The great goalkeeper played professionally for 28 years and his reflections are as moving as they are sombre. “Can you live without it, Gigi?” he asks. “No, I can’t … when you have outlived your youth, and the time when you feel strong and all-powerful has ended, and your muscles, joints and reflexes start to wear out, then it really is like dying.”

Today, in contrast, Buffon is full of life. He has a cigarette on the street in King’s Cross and then walks into the Guardian office like a cheerful force of good will, returning the embrace of a security officer who seems overwhelmed by Buffon’s presence. I am equally struck by the thoughtful way in which, during the next 80 minutes, Buffon considers every question as he moves from his retirement to being part of the management team which felt crushed in March when Italy failed to qualify for the World Cup for a third time in a row. He will compare those feelings with the elation of winning the World Cup in 2006, when his brilliant tournament was preceded by the bitter fallout from the infamous Calciopoli scandal in which he was implicated.

But first I ask Buffon if retirement still feels like a kind of death? “I have very opposite emotions now because, on the one hand, I felt it was the right choice,” he replies. “So I was happy to end my journey. But on the other hand I obviously had fears because from that moment on, after nearly 30 years, I knew my life would become completely different.”

Buffon understands my questions in English but he chooses to answer in Italian. He laughs when I ask if he has played in even a casual five-a-side since that last game with Parma. “No! I really don’t miss playing,” the 48-year-old insists. “I’m convinced it was the right time to finish but I used to have these [conflicted] emotions. And then I realised that, all of a sudden, my life had changed. I’m now living in a different, quieter way. But I learned to accept it and to move on.”

It helps to find acceptance when the list of achievements are as impressive as those accrued by Buffon. He is Italy’s most capped men’s player, with 176 international appearances, and been part of five World Cup squads. Buffon has also won the most Serie A titles, having lifted the Scudetto 10 times with Juventus, and he set Italy’s domestic league record for the longest time, 974 consecutive minutes, without conceding a goal in the 2015-16 season. “There are two things I’m particularly proud of,” Buffon adds. “The first is the longevity and continuity of my high-level performance. The second is the bond with my teammates, with our chemistry on the pitch, which is one of the most beautiful ways of working and playing together.”

He might have seemed flawless for almost a thousand minutes in that landmark season 10 years ago but Buffon believes his best campaign was in 2002-03 when “I was in superb form, a type of feeling I also experienced in 2006 at the World Cup … in those moments it seems that everything is perfectly in order, you feel almost omnipotent, and you have a perception that you are unbeatable”. The fleeting nature of that sensation makes it all the more precious, and Buffon smiles. “I felt I was invincible but the flow of energy and the mental clarity are very difficult to explain. I don’t know what happens within you, but you see so much clarity.”

I’m intrigued by how Buffon found that elusive state at the 2006 World Cup when the buildup was smeared by the murky scandal of Calciopoli which, as he admits in his book, meant the Italian squad was “decidedly unpopular”. There were accusations that Juventus and numerous other Serie A clubs had manipulated the referees’ association so that officials favourable to them took charge of certain matches. Buffon was also accused of placing illegal bets on football and he had to leave the World Cup camp to be grilled for two hours in a prosecutor’s office. He was eventually exonerated.

Twenty years on Buffon tells me that, after a national scandal which meant Juventus were relegated to Serie B, “it wasn’t easy to find the calm and serenity to focus on our priority – which was to play the World Cup at our best. But the real difference is that, when you look at yourself in the mirror, you realise you’re not a liar. You’re true to yourself. We knew we hadn’t done anything bad. We were paying an inexplicable price but the injustice brought out the best in us.”

The 2006 World Cup final between France and Italy was held in Berlin. Buffon shrugs cheerfully when he remembers that, in the 70th minute, his former Juventus teammate Zinedine Zidane scored a penalty against him when his Panenka kick kissed the underside of the crossbar and bounced across the goalline. Marco Materazzi equalised 12 minutes later and the score remained 1-1 at full-time. Then, just before the first period of extra time ended, Buffon denied Zidane with a brilliant save.

“I remember it well,” Buffon says with a wry grin of his save, which was preceded by a deft cross from Willy Sagnol that Zidane rose to meet with a bullet header close to goal. Buffon displayed astonishing reflexes to tip the ball over the bar. “When Zidane hit the ball he headed with such strength and a kind of nastiness,” Buffon says. “It was as if he had connected with his foot rather than his head because it was so fast. I knew he was convinced he had scored. So he was frustrated that I saved it but, being the incredible champion he is, I believe he also appreciated my save in the end.”

Rage soon enveloped Zidane. Five minutes after Buffon’s heroics Materazzi, the Italy defender, insulted the French captain. No one else heard what was said and, at the time, it seemed as if Buffon was the only other player who saw Zidane smash his head into Materazzi’s chest. “I was about 15 metres away and I could hear the thud,” Buffon writes. “If he had done that to anyone else, they would have been knocked out. The linesman didn’t see it. The only one who witnessed it was me. So I ran to the referee and assistant in order to attract their attention. Materazzi was on the ground, Zidane was motionless, I was protesting, and finally the game stopped.” The referee, Horacio Elizondo, consulted with his assistants and, with television cameras having captured the shocking incident, he sent off Zidane. Italy went on to win the World Cup on penalties.

Buffon admits of Zidane’s dismissal that “I was shaken up and caught between mixed emotions. I knew it was Zidane’s last game, and he was one of the greatest and classiest players in the history of football. And I was sorry that it was ending for him in that way”. More than a year would pass before Materazzi admitted that he taunted Zidane by saying: “I prefer the whore that is your sister”.

Buffon shakes his head when I ask if he and Zidane ever discussed the infamous incident. “We never spoke about it,” he says. “Obviously we met so many different times and I believe there is a nice relationship based on mutual trust. I never wanted to talk about it as a matter of respect. He’s a champion who won everything, but I believe that deep down this has always been a painful situation and this is why I didn’t want him to remember that.”

“It’s my fault,” Buffon then jokes in English, recalling Zidane’s disbelief after the Italian’s save was followed by the head-butt.

Buffon suggests that Parma resemble his mother, Juventus his father and Paris Saint-Germain, his third club, is like a wild friend with whom he goes on holiday. So what does Italy, as a team, represent to him? He thinks carefully before, with some tenderness, replying: “The national team is a grandfather. There is a notion of legacy that means it needs it to be protected with delicacy. The grandpa needs to be supported.”

Last month, with Buffon as the head of delegation for the national team, Italy were beaten 4-1 on penalties in a World Cup playoff against Bosnia and Herzegovina. That disappointment and humiliation followed Italy failing to beat Sweden in a World Cup qualification decider in 2017 that also spelt the end of Buffon’s international career and, in 2022, a defeat to North Macedonia that meant they also did not compete at that year’s World Cup in Qatar. As he considers the latest calamity Buffon says: “It has been a painful page for Italian football and myself. If they had told me this would happen [12] years ago I would have said that it’s much easier to see 1,000 aliens around me rather than Italy not qualifying for three tournaments consecutively. But that’s the reality.

“In order to overcome this we need to understand why there are difficulties. We need to change. If we are clear about this analysis, we have the potential to create a much better future. But if you deny there is a problem, then that problem will always be there.”

What are the reasons for the decline of Italian football? “I would say there are three clear ones,” Buffon says “The first is globalisation, which has made it possible for all teams to be very competitive, and the average level of play has increased a lot. Secondly, up to 15 years ago when we used to win, we were stronger tactically than our opponents. And thirdly, we have some fantastic players but what’s missing is the truly creative talent like [Roberto] Baggio, [Alessandro] Del Piero or [Francesco] Totti that used to help us prevail.”

Buffon does not shy away from acknowledging that, even as a great player, he was sometimes affected by depression and panic attacks. But, he says now: “I definitely learned that sharing your weaknesses and your vulnerability can be a synonym of strength, and I feel more secure and more balanced now. I’m at ease when I talk about how vulnerable I’ve been. When I was experiencing that tough period, I realised that talking to people was good therapy.”

We look at a photograph of Buffon kissing the World Cup in 2006 and his usual homage to the ultras is printed on the bottom of his gloves. ‘BUFFON C.U.I.T’ is a tribute to the Commando Ultrà Indian Tips fans with whom he used to support his Tuscan home town team, Carrarese. Buffon wore ‘C.U.I.T’ on his gloves until that very last game he played for Parma and he suggests “I’m one of very few players who had a past as a hardcore fan. The ultra-world is often at the centre of controversy, thanks to acts of criminality and violence, but it is also a world that is little-known. Many of those fans adhere to strong moral codes, and among the ultras there are organisations that do work for charity.”

Does Buffon worry about the increasing sanitisation of football? “That’s a tough one and we need a good debate about it,” he replies. “I think that when sport becomes business, the risk is that you end up losing your values as well as the passion and sense of belonging you have when you wear the jersey of your favourite football team.”

Now that he is no longer working with the national team, Buffon is focused on being “a good father” to his two sons. “It’s a big job in itself and obviously I haven’t been very present in their lives [while a footballer].” But the game runs through him so powerfully that it seems likely Buffon will soon find his way back. “It is the world I know and understand best,” he says. “So I’ll always stay in a world where I’m appreciated and where I can express myself well. And that world is football.”

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