MADRID — Gianluigi Buffon, Juventus’s veteran goalkeeper, has lived through all the highs and lows of soccer, from winning the World Cup with Italy to getting relegated with his club because of a match-fixing scandal.
But even by such standards, his exit from the UEFA Champions League on Wednesday night will rank as one the most dramatic events in his career. In the dying moments of the game, Buffon was shown a red card for angrily protesting a penalty that allowed Real Madrid to advance to the semifinals of the competition.
As Buffon left the field under the applause of the Madrid crowd, the man who stepped forward to take the penalty was inevitably Cristiano Ronaldo, the undisputed goal-scoring machine of the Champions League.