Goalkeeping experiencing a generational shift as roles continue to evolve

Gigi Buffon is taking a few days extra holiday, reported to be seriously contemplating whether the age of 45-and-a-half is, finally, the age to hang up his gloves.

The evergreen Italian goalkeeper has options, including another year on his contract with Parma, where he started his monumental career in the mid-1990s and who last month narrowly missed out on promotion to Serie A. There is interest from the Saudi Pro League, too.

Or there is retirement.

Buffon, a World Cup winner with Italy and 11 times a league champion with Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain, is entitled to his extended vacation and, as he surveys the specialism he has mastered for so long, to wonder if his farewell to playing might coincide with a frontier moment in the history of goalkeeping.

This is a threshold summer for some of the greats Buffon has shared pitches with. Manchester United have waved goodbye to David de Gea after 12 years at Old Trafford. Hugo Lloris, France’s most capped footballer, counts down what remains of his time at Tottenham Hotspur.

Manuel Neuer finds himself under unusual scrutiny at Bayern Munich, where he missed the second half of last season with injury, his place taken by a de luxe emergency signing, Yann Sommer. This coming season there will be sceptical lenses trained on Neuer, all assessing whether, at 37, he remains agile and sharp enough to still cover the wide territory of the pitch he has always claimed through a career spent defining the role of modern ‘sweeper-keeper’.

Gianluigi Donnarumma has been labelled the 'New Buffon'. Getty

As for the ‘New Buffon’, as Gigio Donnarumma - Italy’s first-choice gloveman since Buffon stepped back from international duty - has been dubbed since he was in his mid-teens, these are