Juventus Confirm �33m Buffon Bid
Wednesday 20th June 2001
Juventus vice-president Roberto Bettega has admitted he is waiting for an answer from Parma after tabling an official �33 million bid for Gianluigi Buffon. The Italy goalkeeper has been offered a five-year contract worth �3.2 million a season.
Bettega's comments come a day after Juventus confirmed the signing of defender Lilian Thuram, also from Parma, for �22 million.
Former Italy international Bettega, who played for Juventus between 1975 and 1983, explained: "We offered Parma �33 million for Buffon. Now we are waiting for an answer from the club."
The prospect of netting over �50 million for their top two defenders could persuade Parma to sell Buffon, despite sports director Enrico Fedele revealing last month that the player was "untransferable".
He said at the time: "Buffon is not for sale. Our goalkeeper refused a �33 million bid from Barcelona and he will not move, even for an offer of this same level."
But Buffon has already admitted there is a chance he will join Thuram in Turin. "At the moment it is 70 per cent that I will not leave Parma," he said in May. "The other 30 per cent can be divided between Roma and Juventus. I will talk with the management at the end of the season, then we will decide."
Buffon, the nephew of former Italy goalkeeper Lorenzo Buffon, made his debut for Parma at the age of 17 and has been a regular in the first team since he was 18.
He has overtaken Francesco Toldo as Italy's first-choice goalkeeper since Angelo Peruzzi was dropped four years ago and is a crowd favourite at Parma, with whom he won the Italian Cup and the Uefa Cup in 1999.
Juventus are looking to replace Holland international Edwin van der Sar, who came in for fierce criticism at the beginning of the season as a succession of blunders left Juventus out of the Champions' League and struggling in Serie A.
"It was the first time anything like that has ever happened to me," admitted the former Ajax star. "It was strange.
"You don't want to believe it. But there comes a point when you have to believe it. You have to recognise that you are not playing like you used to, like you are capable of.
"You ask yourself things and you start to want to try different things and then you lose your points of reference. When you think you lose that fraction of a second and it affects you when you need to take action. That happened to me and I don't want to feel it again."
