Gianluigi Buffon is due to retire at the end of the season but the regrettable truth is that he should have quit some time ago. At least that way we would have been spared the pathetic sight of a man whom many revere as a hero, one of football’s true greats, behaving as if he believed that he had grown bigger and more important than the game itself.
Let’s be honest about what happened at the end of the Champions League quarter-final second leg at the Bernabeu: referee Michael Oliver made a correct, fair and brave decision to award Madrid a penalty and, when Buffon saw the fine glass of his dream shatter, he reacted like a spoilt child who has been twinned with a deluded thug.