Every time there is a discussion about Goalkeepers, one of the first subject addressed is… who is the best #1?

First of all, it is important to understand what time period to keep in consideration.

We are going to analyze only the last 25 years, since the early 90’s, when was introduced the rule of the back-pass (Law 12, section 2 of the Laws of the game) and the Goalkeeper role has begun to take on the specific shape we all know today.

 Second of all, we need to decide what Areas to analyze. In my opinion, mentioning every single GK aspect (technique, tactics, physicality, confidence etc.) is going to open a huge discussion, where there are not empirical evidence to give an answer and each person will develop a different opinion in according to the GK style he/she likes the most. Peter Schmeichel, Edwin van der Sar, Oliver Kahn, Fabien Barthez, Nelson Dida, Manuel Neuer are only some of the names who deserve a Spot in the Hall of Fame of this position. Anyway, the purpose of the article is to figure out who, between these great champions, has the something extra that can unquestionably give us an answer. Gigi Buffon is my answer. It might be an easy pick, but it needs to be motivated. We all know that the Goalkeeper position is one, if not the hardest one, on the field for amount of skills requested and pressure from the environment. So, in a condition of a great stress, the difficult part is not to play a few good games, but to maintain high standards for long time. In addition to that, in the last decade the game has changed a lot and the position that had to adapt more to the modern game and to develop new methodologies of training is the Goalkeeper. The champions I mentioned above are great Goalkeepers and in a certain point of their career they were able to reach the top of the pyramid, but they also went through some ups and downs. The Goalkeeper that more than everyone was able to constantly be at the top for many Generation of Keepers, is Gigi Buffon… the #1!!!