Two living legends go head to head when Juventus host Roma on Sunday night, but while they will be rivals for 90 minutes, they will be friends again right after.
Roma's remarkable pursuit of a record-breaking Juventus side in the race for last season's Scudetto came to an ignominious end with a shock 4-1 loss at Catania in May. After the game, Francesco Totti had the unenviable task of having to go on television and tell Italy what it felt like to finish as a runner-up for the seventh time in his career.Totti being Totti, he was typically magnanimous in defeat. Even more impressively, when confronted with his Juve counterpart Gianluigi Buffon on a live feed from Turin, the then 37-year-old forward even managed to bring himself to take a playful jibe about a man one year his junior. "Gigi, you look older than me!" "I'm sorry, Francesco, I can't hear you," the Juve captain replied. "There's a lot of people screaming here because we won the league!"It was a wonderfully light-hearted moment at the end of a titanic title tussle and perfectly illustrated the fantastic nature of the relationship between the leaders of the top two teams in Italy: rivalry on the field; respect off it.In truth, though, it goes far beyond that. Totti and Buffon are not only two icons of Italian football, they are great friends."We grew up together, going from the Italy Under-15s all the way through to winning to the World Cup together," Totti told La Gazzetta dello Sport this week."He's a lovely person. We send one another messages all the time but we don't see each other so much because we don't live in the same city."But Gigi is one of the few friends that I have in football."
The feeling is certainly mutual. When the 20th anniversary of Totti's Serie A debut arrived on March 28 of last year, Buffon decided that a simple text message would not suffice. Consequently, he decided to pen an open letter to his fellow veteran."Dear Francesco, you have made Italian football history,” the Italy skipper wrote.“Twenty years in Serie A - what an achievement ... I still have the image of your first goal in my mind: it was a Roma-Foggia tie.“We’re friends, you know how much I care about you. We started together with the Under-15 side, we had some splendid years together in the national team and we continue to meet as opponents in Serie A.“You often score against me (10 times to be precise) like a champion who has forgotten our friendship ...“Then, at the final whistle, there are smiles between us again, like when I saved a penalty that I feared you would chip [in 2011] – it saddened me that was you.“We are from a fortunate generation. It’s true that every season after the age of 30 is worth seven, but you seem to go back in time instead of ageing.“You’ve written the history of Italian football, with the present and the future – you are a player who cannot be doubted."And, for me, you’ll always be an Azzurro. An embrace from your friend, Gigi."It is hardly surprising then, that Totti has admitted that "the only regret" he has is that he never got to play alongside Buffon at club level, revealing that Roma had actually gone close to signing the shot-stopper at one point. However, perhaps it is better this way. For us neutrals at least. For just under two decades, two living legends have been going head to head on a regularly basis, yielding so many memorable moments. There was Totti's 'cucchiao' finish on Buffon while the shot-stopper was still at Parma; the aforementioned penalty save that seemed to symbolise Buffon's return to form during Juve's resurgence under Antonio Conte; the Totti thunderbolt in the February 2013 showdown at the Stadio Olimpico.Theirs is a never-ending story; an eternal struggle; the irresistible force against the immovable object. What's more, while it seems as if an entire lifetime has passed since they first met, these are two stars that continue to shine as brightly as ever. Totti underlined his enduring class with a sublime finish in Roma's midweek Champions League draw at Manchester City, thus becoming the oldest scorer in the competition's history.
This came just days after Buffon enhanced his legendary status by saving German Denis' penalty in last weekend's Serie A meeting with Atalanta after pointing beforehand to the precise spot where the ball was going to go. Buffon, like Totti, is still writing pages in what the goalkeeper referred to as the "history of Italian football".Sunday's meeting in Turin promises to be another incredible chapter in a tale of two men who have followed different paths since their first meeting as 14-year-olds yet never stopped running into one another.Having preserved his unblemished start to the 2014-15 Serie A season with that penalty save in Bergamo, Buffon will be determined to make it six consecutive games without conceding a goal. However, even if Totti were take it away from him, there will be no bitterness towards his old foe, only friendship. Same as it ever was.
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