Experienced Paris Saint-Germain goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon has revealed that he suffered with depression early in his career and once missed a match for Juventus due to a panic attack. Despite enjoying success from an early age, Buffon has suffered difficult personal moments, particularly during his early period with Italian giants, Juventus.

Still hoping to win a Champions League title to his enviable collection which includes a World Cup, several league titles, among other trophies, the 40-year-old confessed there were moments when everything did not seem to make sense and that it appeared no one appreciated him. “For a few months, everything just stopped making sense,” Buffon told Vanity Fair. “It seemed like no one cared about me, just the footballer I represented. It was like everyone was asking about Buffon and nobody about Gigi. It was a really difficult moment.”

Buffon continued: “I was 25, riding the wave of success but one day, before a Serie A match, I went to Ivano Bordon, the goalkeeper coach, and told him: ‘Ivano, get [second-choice goalkeeper Antonio] Chimenti to warm up and play. I’m not feeling up to it. I had suffered a panic attack and was in no state to play the match.”

However, Buffon said it was important the situation reached this point as it allowed him to move forward. “If I had not gone through this experience, that cloud and that turmoil with other people, I may have never have got out of it,” he said. “I had the clarity of understanding that it was a watershed moment between giving up and confronting those insecurities we all have. I was never scared of showing them nor of crying – something which happens to me and of which I am not at all embarrassed.”