Gianluigi Buffon

The veteran goalkeeper made his Parma debut back in 1995, aged 17, and after two spells with Juventus and a season with Paris Saint-Germain he returned to the Stadio Ennio Tardini last year.

Italy great Buffon, who has made a record 176 appearances for the Azzurri, has appeared 23 times for Parma in Serie B this season, with Giuseppe Iachini's side currently in 13th.

His efforts have since been rewarded with a one-year extension, meaning he will continue playing football past the age of 46.

Parma president Kyle Krause announced Buffon's renewal at a news conference on Monday.

"I have great news, Gigi has renewed his contract until 2024," Krause said. "He is a great player, a pride for us: Gigi has a great passion for Parma, we are very happy for his support and his commitment."

Buffon lifted the Coppa Italia, Supercoppa Italiana and an unlikely UEFA Cup in 1998-99 with Parma before leaving for Juve in 2001.

His glittering career in Turin included 11 league championships – one of which came when they topped Serie B in 2006-07, Buffon having stayed at the club despite their relegation due to the Calciopoli scandal.

The 44-year-old also won five Coppa Italia titles and six Supercoppa Italiana crowns.

Buffon reached three Champions League finals with the Bianconeri, losing each one, before a brief spell at PSG preceded his return to the Allianz Stadium in 2019.

A winner of the 2006 World Cup, Italy's record cap holder made his final international appearance in a friendly with Argentina in March 2018.

In a wide-spanning career, Buffon has appeared 953 times at club level, which totals at a mammoth 85,286 minutes of action for his 404 clean sheets and 798 goals conceded.

He has managed 2,001 minutes on the pitch in the league for Parma this season, conceding 23 goals, as many appearances as he has made, while earning just the one shutout.

Buffon will hope to deliver his second clean sheet in Serie B at Monza on Wednesday.

Manchester United, Milan and Paris Saint-Germain are among the major European outfits who are due to farewell high-profile players when free agency comes into force on June 30.

Domestic leagues across the world appear increasingly likely to run beyond that deadline, meaning sides up and down the divisions could be forced to renegotiate deals beyond the typical expiry date.

It remains to be seen how governing bodies will approach the unfamiliar territory but Edinson Cavani, Mario Gotze and Zlatan Ibrahimovic will be watching closely like dozens more across Europe's top five leagues.

These are the stars and solid supporting cast members whose contract situations are worth monitoring in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

LaLiga

Athletic Bilbao: Aritz Aduriz (retiring), Benat, Mikel San Jose
Atletico Madrid: Antonio Adan
Espanyol: Ander Iturraspe
Granada: Roberto Soldado
Real Valladolid: Hatem Ben Arfa
Sevilla: Ever Banega (joining Al Shabab at end of contract), Nolito
Valencia: Ezequiel Garay
Villarreal: Santi Cazorla 

Premier League

Bournemouth: Ryan Fraser
Burnley: Joe Hart
Chelsea: Olivier Giroud, Pedro, Willian
Liverpool: Adam Lallana, Nathaniel Clyne
Manchester City: David Silva (confirmed he will leave at end of contract)
Manchester United: Nemanja Matic, Timothy Fosu-Mensah, Odion Ighalo (loan ends)
Newcastle United: Matty Longstaff
Tottenham: Jan Vertonghen, Japhet Tanganga

Serie A

Atalanta: Jose Luis Palomino
Hellas Verona: Fabio Borini
Inter: Ashley Young
Juventus: Gianluigi Buffon
Milan: Lucas Biglia, Giacomo Bonaventura, Zlatan Ibrahimovic
Napoli: Jose Callejon, Dries Mertens

Bundesliga

Bayer Leverkusen: Charles Aranguiz
Borussia Dortmund: Mario Gotze, Lukasz Piszczek
Hertha Berlin: Salomon Kalou
Schalke: Benjamin Stambouli
Wolfsburg: Robin Knoche

Ligue 1

Lille: Loic Remy
Monaco: Jemerson
Nice: Walter Benitez, Arnaud Lusamba
Paris Saint-Germain: Edinson Cavani, Thomas Meunier, Tanguy Kouassi, Layvin Kurzawa, Thiago Silva

The veteran goalkeeper made his Parma debut back in 1995, aged 17, and returned to the Stadio Ennio Tardini last year after a season with Paris Saint-Germain either side of two spells with Juventus.

Buffon, who has made a record 176 appearances for the Azzurri, played 26 times for Parma in Serie B in the 2021-22 season as they finished 12th in the Italian second tier.

The 2006 World Cup winner signed a one-year contract extension last season, meaning he will continue playing football past the age of 46 in 2024.

As Buffon prepares for his 28th season as a professional footballer, he suggested he has no desire to hang up his boots just yet.

"I could retire at 55!" he told reporters at a news conference in Ducali on Friday. "I played ten years in Parma in my first life, then twenty years at Juve, one in Paris and now I close the circle again in Emilia.

"And I'm not 100 years old. For ten years I have been thinking about when I will stop, but then I always continue.

"I have had important experiences that have allowed me to know football, but I'm not 100 per cent sure I'll stay in this world [when I do retire]. Maybe I'll experience something else."

Buffon has played alongside some of the finest footballers in the world during his glittering career, in which he has lifted 11 league titles, 14 domestic cups and an unlikely UEFA Cup with Parma in 1999.

The 44-year-old has also finished runner-up in the Champions League on three occasions, and puts Neymar, Cristiano Ronaldo and Kylian Mbappe among the best players he has featured alongside.

"I can say the five strongest Italians: [Roberto] Baggio, [Francesco] Totti, [Alessandro] Del Piero, [Andrea] Pirlo and [Antonio] Cassano," he added. 

"For foreigners, I would say [Lillian] Thuram, Neymar, Mbappe, CR7 and Ibra [Zlatan Ibrahimovic]."

The bulldozing Bianconeri have won Serie A for a ninth year in succession following their 2-0 victory over Sampdoria on Sunday.

Cristiano Ronaldo and Federico Bernardeschi scored the goals that clinched the championship for Juve following a run of just one win in their previous five games.

Although it may not have been a vintage Juve season they still extended their record run of consecutive titles.

With the help of Opta, we take a look at the stats behind their ongoing dominance.

Days of glory

The first title in this incredible run was secured on May 6, 2012.

By defeating Sampdoria, they clinched number nine three days after they celebrated their 3,000th consecutive day as Italian champions.

A record for Sarri

Antonio Conte led Juve to their first three titles in this run and Massimiliano Allegri extended it by a further five.

Maurizio Sarri kept the tradition going in his first season at the helm, earning his first major trophy in Italian football.

By topping Serie A aged 61, he surpassed Nils Liedholm (60 years and 219 days) to become the oldest coach to win a Scudetto.

Not as solid

Sarri was appointed to bring a more expansive approach to Turin and their defence has seemingly suffered as a result.

Juve have already conceded 38 goals, becoming the first team to win the title while shipping that many since Milan let in the same amount in their triumphant 1961-62 season.

Veteran centre-back Giorgio Chiellini is the only player to have made at least one appearance in each of Juve's past nine Serie A title successes, with Gianluigi Buffon the only player in history to have won more Scudetti.

In the season he surpassed Paolo Maldini at the top of the all-time Serie A appearances list, Buffon, who has been back-up to Wojciech Szczesny since returning from Paris Saint-Germain, won the league for an incredible 10th time.

Ronaldo rolls on

Juve's continued success owes a lot to the incredible goalscoring feats of Cristiano Ronaldo.

The five-time Ballon d'Or winner may be 35 but his prolific nature does not appear to be waning; this season he became the first player in history to score at least 50 goals in Serie A, LaLiga and the Premier League.

Ronaldo was also the fastest to 50 goals among players to have debuted since 1994-95, hitting the milestone in just 61 appearances with a double against Lazio on Monday.

That brace also moved the Portugal captain onto 30 goals for the season, a tally he stretched to 31 against Samp, making him just the third Juve star to reach that mark in a single top-flight campaign, following in the footsteps of Felice Borel (32 in 1933-34) and John Hansen (30 in 1951-52).

That was the verdict of head coach Andrea Pirlo after Ronaldo netted twice in Saturday's 4-0 win at Parma, a game bookended by goals from Dejan Kulusevski and Alvaro Morata.

Ronaldo's supporting cast impressed, but there was no doubting the star of the show, the Portuguese leaping impressively to head his first before striking early in the second half to kill off the game.

The game came three days on from Ronaldo missing a penalty in Juve's frustrating 1-1 draw with Atalanta.

Pirlo was impressed by Ronaldo's appetite for the occasion, and the eagerness of the 35-year-old to make up for that spot-kick failure.

"Ronaldo was angry for having missed the penalty, but we had a few days to think about it and he showed how much he cares about scoring goals, even better when during open play," Pirlo said, quoted on the Juventus website.

"We weren't happy with Wednesday's result, but the performance was good. We had to get back the points we lost against Atalanta and we did it in the best way.

"We needed a team win and to score and we did it while playing good football. We are in a good moment, I like how we attack the opponents when they have the ball, we are growing, the right spirit is here, but we are only at the beginning and we will have to have this attitude in every match."

Omar Sivori was the last Serie A player to hit 33 goals in a year, doing so midway through an eight-year stay at Juventus.

Ronaldo could still improve on his own 2020 haul, with Juventus facing Fiorentina on Tuesday in their final game before a short break.

His 33 goals have come from just 28 appearances, with 27 scored with his right foot, four with his left foot and two with his head.

Thirteen of those goals have been penalties, with Ronaldo taking 15 spot-kicks in Serie A since the year began.

Just two of the goals have been scored from outside the penalty area, with Ronaldo firmly established as a predator inside the 18-yard box, while nobody has hit the woodwork in Serie A more often than him this year – the former Real Madrid and Manchester United star being one of six players to do so six times.

The double made him this season's outright top scorer so far with 12 goals, two ahead of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Romelu Lukaku, whose heroics are driving the challenges of Milan and Inter respectively.

Gianluigi Buffon, who began his professional career with Parma in the mid-1990s, kept a clean sheet for Juventus against his old club.

The 42-year-old goalkeeper has experienced the ups and downs of life at Juventus in almost 20 years with the Bianconeri, across two spells.

And former Italy number one Buffon says it will take a string of stirring displays to be sure rookie coach Pirlo has stamped his mark on the team, who remain unbeaten through 13 rounds of Serie A games.

"Now it will be important for us to put together many convincing performances, showing off a good game, and then we can say that we are Andrea Pirlo's team," Buffon said.

"We will have some highs and lows – as is normal – but when we have the highs, we are good and beautiful to look at."

Real Madrid centre-back Ramos earned a 177th appearance for Spain in Saturday's Nations League match against Switzerland, having pulled level with Buffon when coming off the bench against the Netherlands on Wednesday.

It means Ramos, a World Cup winner with Spain, is now just eight short of the overall record held by Egypt's Ahmed Hassan.

As well as his triumph in South Africa in 2010, Ramos has won two European Championships with Spain and scored 23 goals for his country – putting him joint eighth on the list with Alfredo Di Stefano.

Indeed, no player has won more games for his country than Ramos (129 prior to kick-off against Switzerland).

Coincidentally, Ramos has played against Italy 10 times – more than any other nation – and faced Buffon on each occasion, winning four of those matches while losing just one.

The 34-year-old has played in 17 World Cup games and 15 in the European Championship, while 97 of his caps came under the leadership of Vicente Del Bosque, winning 76.2 per cent of those matches under the ex-Madrid coach.

Ramos' international career began in 2005 against Chile and by the age of 26 he had already racked up a century of appearances.

Buffon's last Italy outing came against Argentina in March 2018, some 7,450 days after making his Azzurri bow against Russia in October 1997.

The Juventus great, also a World Cup winner, kept 68 sheets and clocked up 15,243 minutes played for his country.