Twelve years have elapsed since that move to Juventus and it is easy to forget that he once played for another club. He had made his Serie A debut with Parma two years before that and won the Italian Cup, the Italian Super Cup and the Uefa Cup before joining Juventus for €51m, replacing Edwin van der Sar, who was Fulham-bound. He came on for the injured Gianluigi Pagliuca and immediately saved heroically from Dmitri Alenichev and ensured Italy qualified for the following year's World Cup. At the European Championships in Portugal during the match between Italy and Denmark, a horrendous match, I was the only one smiling."īuffon had made his Italy debut as a 19-year-old in October 1997 in the snow against Russia. "It happened all of a sudden, where I used to be scared of going to. The goalkeeper had seen the psychologist for more than six months when he suddenly realised that he was better. They are people who are there to help you and if you find a good psychologist, they will allow you to talk about everything and open up, without the slightest of fears, and that is no easy thing." I thought psychologists were people who rob, figuratively of course, money from the insecure. But it was something I had had to revaluate. "But I did see a psychologist and that helped me enormously. I just couldn't allow myself to go away for two or three months to get better. Because every time after that, if I had failed with a save or whatever, I would have been reminded of that period. "The problem was if I had said: 'I am going away for two months to get better' I would have been finished. You are seen as the footballer, the idol, so no one thinks to stop and ask you: 'Hey, how are you?' "To the fans it does not matter a damn how you are. It was not straightforward, though, he admitted five years later when he revealed the "dark periods" he had been through in 20. He spoke to his family and his closest friends, realised he was suffering from an illness and contacted a psychologist. The fact that he on Tuesday night will match his friend Fabio Cannavaro as Italy's most capped player is a lesson to all footballers out there: if you suffer from depression, seek help. The Juventus and Italy No1 was suffering from depression.
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