Why Gianluigi Buffon's actions were unwarranted
Gianluigi Buffon must have seen his footballing life flash in front of his eyes during the split second that referee Michael Oliver took between seeing a collision in the box between Mehdi Benatia and Lucas Vazquez and pointing to the spot to award Real Madrid a penalty.
The iconic figure will have seen eight Scudetti flash by his eyes, four Italian domestic cups, a World Cup win and more astonishing saves than people packed into the Bernabeu to watch Wednesday’s thrilling Champions League quarter-final second leg between Juventus and the two-time defending title holders.
Last of all, he will have seen Mario Mandzukic’s first-half double and Blaise Matuidi’s ugly but precious third, which drew the tie improbably level as the Italians threatened to complete a comeback for the ages after being thumped 3-0 in Turin a week earlier.
Oliver pointing to the spot will not be the final thing he sees on a football field – there is still more than a month of action left in the season before his anticipated retirement – but there can be little doubt that Buffon also saw his hopes of winning a first Champions League trophy slip tantalisingly out of reach.
Certainly, there were two decades worth of pent-up frustration in the manner the goalkeeper stormed towards referee Olivier. He appeared to approach the Englishman snarling like a pitbull, casting off the dignified aura that has surrounded him over the years, appearing more like Diego Costa.
We may never know what exactly was said, but it was deemed sufficient for the red card to be brandished towards the goalkeeper for just a fourth time in his career – and a first occasion in Europe.
Cristiano Ronaldo was never likely to miss from the spot. The Portuguese has built his career on succeeding in such clutch moments and has such confidence in his own ability that he planted the ball into the top corner of the Juventus net past substitute keeper Wojciech Szczesny as if the fates had already predetermined he would score.
By this stage, Buffon was stewing the changing rooms, already composing an astonishing broadside on Oliver.
Speaking to Mediaset Premium after the game, he accused the official of “lacking personality” and having a “garbage bin in the place of a heart”.
The 40-year-old spoke with incredible passion but lacked the statesmanly air with which he has conducted his affairs over the years.
Instead of speaking from the head, he spoke from the heart, letting himself down as badly away from the field as he had done previously on it.
Indeed, his claims that Oliver lacked the “personality” for the game fall short of the mark. Not only did the referee have the strength to make a tie-deciding decision at a crucial moment, on the balance of the evidence, he got the call right.
By claiming that the official has “a garbage bin for a heart”, Buffon seemed to indicate that Oliver was implicit in deciding the narrative of the game, that he should somehow have acted as an author in his own fairy tale – the very thing the goalkeeper was accusing him of doing in favour of Madrid.
Football, though, is rarely romantic, even if those are the stories that touch our emotions most deeply.
And it is not the referee’s job to decide the course of a match on such matters. It is to objectively uphold the laws of the game. On Wednesday, there can be little doubt that Oliver did that in the most trying of circumstances, even if it means that Turin is now permanently off his list of vacation destinations.
Buffon, meanwhile, let himself down and let his side down, even if his “human reaction” was defended by coach Massimiliano Allegri in the aftermath. No doubt Ronaldo would have found this goalkeeping icon a tougher obstacle to pass from 12 yards than former Arsenal custodian Szczesny.
Watching on from the sidelines was Zinedine Zidane, a man who knows about dramatic exits, having been sent off in the final game of his career – the World Cup final, no less.
Buffon, who was in goal for Italy against France that day in Berlin, had previously said that he wanted his career to finish in the way that Zidane’s did.
Zizou’s exit was rather fitting, however. He was always a mercurial genius, as he proved during the World Cup of 2006 and notably in the final, when he had the coolness to clip a Panenka over Buffon from the spot to give France the lead, only to implode when insulted by Marco Materazzi, leading to the 12th red card of his career – the often forgotten, gritty, side to a player who was the ultimate artist.
For Buffon, though, his reaction was juxtaposed awkwardly against much of what had gone before it in his career. It is a sentiment given a more bitter taste by his ugly and ill-judged words thereafter.
This was no way for one of the game’s greats to bow out. Buffon only has himself to blame for that - not the referee.