Twenty-five years ago today, in the summer of 2001, 23 years old Gianluigi Buffon moved from Parma to Juventus for around €52.9 million. Adjusted for inflation, that would be worth roughly €82 million today, which would make him the most expensive goalkeeper of all time. Buffon's transfer broke the existing record set one year earlier by Angelo Peruzzi, who moved from Juventus to Lazio in 2000 for £15.7 million, then the highest fee for a goalkeeper. He justified it by becoming the best goalkeeper on the planet and Juventus's first choice from day one, staying there for almost two decades. Buffon's transfer still ranks third on the all-time list of most expensive goalkeepers, behind only Kepa Arrizabalaga to Chelsea in 2018 and Alisson to Liverpool the same year, and ahead of André Onana to Manchester United in 2023. Shortly before his record transfer, Buffon was the subject of controversy in Italy. In his final season at Parma, 2000-01, he briefly wore the number 88 shirt, which drew criticism in the Italian press over the association with neo-Nazi numerology, where 8 stands for the letter H, the eighth letter of the alphabet. Buffon denied any knowledge of that meaning at the time, insisting he simply liked the number. He even explained it as the number representing four balls, "a symbol of character." Years later, Italian football banned the number 88 from all levels of the game, partly because of the controversy surrounding Buffon in 2000.