Gianluigi Buffon , veteran goalkeeper of Juventus Turin , analyzed in an autobiographical letter published on Tuesday his long experience in the world of football and the problems he had to manage success and overcome depression.

Buffon, 41 , confessed that the pressure and repetitive pace of life of the player caused him a deep depression when he was 26 , which came out approaching the culture and learning to value "the little things", as read in a long letter published in " The Players' Tribune ".

"If you live in a nihilistic way, looking only at football, your soul will begin to change. In the end you will be so depressed that you will no longer feel like getting out of bed, " Buffon wrote, who ideally addressed himself when he was 17 and began his career. "You can laugh, but that's what will happen to you. It will arrive at the highest moment of your career, when you will have everything a man can ask of life. You will be 26 years old, you will be the Juventus and National team goalkeeper. You will have money and respect. People will call you 'Superman', "he continued.

Buffon explained that football can "become a robot" because of repeated daily training and matches, and that one day, having no strength, decided to change their customs and go to visit a museum.

It was there when he saw the painting entitled "The Walk" by the French naturalized Russian painter Marc Chagall, in which the author is appraised holding his wife by one hand while it fluctuates freely in the air. "This image will make you feel like a child, the feeling of happiness in simple things," wrote Buffon, who acknowledged that he returned several times in that period to the Turin museum to see that work, currently exhibited in the Russian State Museum of San Petersburg

In his long letter, the Italian goalkeeper stressed the importance of being considered a " normal man, like the others ", despite the success of the player, and reviewed the long series of mistakes he made in his youth.

Like when he wanted to encourage his fellow Parma with a phrase that he didn't know how to be linked to fascism or when, still young, he was going to party before his matches. "But mistakes are important because they remind you that you are human. They will remind you that you do not know anything, my friend. It is important because the football world will try to convince you that you are special, but remember that you are not different from the man of bar or the electrician , of whom you are friends, "he wrote.

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