Gianluigi Buffon was a professional soccer player.
Association football , more commonly known as football or soccer , is a team sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball . Gianluigi Buffon . Buffon is one of only eighteen players to have made at least 1,000 professional career appearances ; with 168 international caps , Buffon is also the most capped player in the history of the Italian national team , the joint fifth-most capped male international footballer of all time , alongside Iván Hurtado , and the most capped European international player ever . The UEFA Club Footballer of the Year was a football award presented by UEFA to the most outstanding performers of the European club football season .