He might have recently celebrated his 43rd birthday earlier this year, but Gigi Buffon is nowhere near ready to hang up his gloves just yet.
The long-serving shot-stopper, who has spent 19 seasons so far at Juventus - including one where they were demoted to Serie B - has been limited to just five Serie A appearances for the Bianconeri this campaign and ten across all competitions. However, his former Azzurri and Juventus teammate Andrea Pirlo, who's now on the tactician's bench, has fielded him in the Coppa Italia, where he's featured in four matches, was in charge of the team during their clashes with Inter during the semi-finals, and will be in between the sticks for the final against plucky outfit Atalanta in May.
Buffon, who has spent his entire professional career in Italy save for a one year spell with PSG during the 2018/2019 campaign, holds several records. During the 2015/2016 term, he went 974 minutes sans conceding a goal, which smashed the prior record that had been established by AC Milan's Sebastiano Rossi in the 1993/1994 year (929 minutes). In fact, Buffon is the only shot-stopper to have his name appear more than once on this list - his appears three times - in addition to the aforementioned 2015/2016 campaign, he features in the 2017/2018 and 2013/2014 seasons, and with shut-out records of 791 and 745 minutes, it's enough to rank him fifth and tied for eighth respectively.
It's not surprising that the decorated goalkeeper holds records for the most clean sheets (294), most consecutive clean sheets (10), most clean sheets in a single campaign (21, in 2011/2012 and 2015/2016), and most appearances in Serie A (648) as well as with the Azzurri (176).
He's already reportedly indicated that he's looking to retire by 2023, which means that any club that snaps him up means they could get two years out of him.
So, with that in mind, despite his advancing years, it will indeed be interesting to see where he next decided to ply his trade after this season. Although playing every single game week in, week out may be a bit much for a man who will be turning 44 years old next year, he still clearly still is fit enough to feature as a back-up option for quite a few sides around Europe or potentially even across the pond for one of MLS's newer or more established sides.
