Gianluigi Donnarumma confessed Gigi Buffon urged him to join Paris Saint-Germain, but is now just following the same footsteps in Champions League failure.
Italy international Donnarumma hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons last night after he was caught in possession by Karim Benzema, sparking the Real Madrid comeback to win 3-1, securing their place in the quarter-final 3-2 on aggregate.
It is a painfully familiar scenario for PSG, the club most obsessed with winning the Champions League and yet getting no closer to that aim, regardless of how many big names they put together.
Donnarumma’s experience also worryingly mirrors that of his Italy international mentor Buffon, because while they had completely different ages and levels of experience, both goalkeepers made costly howlers in that PSG jersey.
In March 2019, PSG had won the first leg 2-0 against Manchester United and were playing on home turf at Parc des Princes, but Buffon and his teammates were if anything too confident.
“I still think about that night three or four times a week,” confessed Buffon last year.
“I blame myself for an incredible mistake, one that with my experience I really should not have made. Mentally, that night, I could feel my concentration was not at the usual level.
“I didn’t have the strength to realise we were going into the game too confident, I wasn’t the old man in the locker room who shouts at everyone telling them to wake up.
“I was so sure that year we were going into the Final.”
The Champions League is famously the only major trophy that has eluded Buffon in his career, but while he has plenty of experience, the same cannot be said of Donnarumma.
The 23-year-old was participating in only his fifth Champions League game ever, and while he won EURO 2020 over the summer with Italy, he has practically no European pedigree at club level.
With the Azzurri, Gigio was surrounded by a solid squad with great unity, not something anyone can say about Paris Saint-Germain and its collection of ill-suited stars.
Sono Italiano! But being honest, I don’t think that Donnarumma is better than Navas. Gigi hs played in some huge games in his career, so I doubt it was the pressure that caused his error, but Keylor Navas was better suited for that game. In fact, I think that Cragno is also better than Donnarumma.
I went to watch that again and yes Benz did foul Donnarumma even pushing him down. Sometimes refs don’t call these fouls to keep a big game balanced (for example in Euro final Chellini did grab Saka’s shirt dragging him to the pitch but mins before Greilish, Macquire pushed Insigne down in the box and caused him to cartwheel backwards falling) however Donnarumma clearly was pushed down to the pitch. Now was the ref in this CL balanced? I did not watch the whole thing as tend to avoid Iberia games as too many antics-like pushing Donnarumma down and getting away with it. Unclear if PSG fouled a RM player before this incident to warrant this balancing act theory so if there was none by default RM fouled keeper and walked. Yeah keeper tends to do this at time’s but he clearly was pushed down. Did this affect the other 2 RM goals, maybe if one presses on a rattled nerves theory, where players and coach fumed over ref not calling the foul and instead they played on.
CRAGNO AND NAVAS HAHA come on.
Every major keeper past and present has had mistakes in them, they are human. And this wasn’t a clear cut mistake, stemmed from a quick ball back to goal and then it was debatable as a foul, many ex pros said foul, whereas other ex pros said not, therefore it seems subjective. Depending on who’s right Donnarumma is unlucky or a scapegoat all of a sudden, it’s a team game, and a lot of that back line can question themselves with last nights performance. Back to Donnarumma when it mattered Italy could depend on him. Navas is over the hill (and full of mistakes in big games remember vs. Juve at the Bernabeu, if Courtois could take Navas’s place at Real Madrid, then Donnarumma can definitely do that at PSG, lets not forget the blunders Courtois had in his career.
We are talking about a 22 year old European Champion.
Neymar is a so called genius he lost the ball on one of the goals. These guys are human and this thing happens.
It’s a 70% more likely foul, no doubt. But the referee needs to balance the game sometimes.
So happy that Pochettino didn’t come to Juventus because of the demanding money. He doesn’t have the capacity to coach a big club.