Why Gianluigi Buffon Will Be Juventus' X-Factor in 2015/16

It's been a bumpy start for Juventus in Serie A this season.  The four-time defending champions have only managed a single point through three games.  They suffered a shock opening loss to Udinese before losing an early six-pointer against Roma.  Expectations were huge for a rebound on Saturday at home against Chievo, but an early long-range bolt put Chievo up and Juve needed a late penalty to finally rescue their first point.

The start is worrying, but it's not unexpected.  Juve lost a trio of impact players over the summer in Andrea Pirlo, Carlos Tevez and Arturo Vidal.  The summer transfer window saw a huge amount of turnaround.  No fewer than 10 new players have been introduced into the first team.  Seven of them are midfielders or forwards.

It's going to take time for those new pieces to mesh.  When they do, they have the talent to become a force of nature, but for the time being they need to start picking up points while the knitting process takes place.  For them to do that, they're going to have to rely on the one unit of the team that returns intact: the defense.

The back line is a talented group, and their keystone will be the fulcrum on which Juve's season will balance: goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon.

Buffon is Juve's rock.  He arrived in Turin in 2001 as the most expensive goalkeeper in history.  Juventus paid 100 billion lire—just under €52 million.  No goalkeeper since has been valued at even half that.

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He secured his place in the history of the game long ago.  He's won almost everything there is for a player to win and has made some of the iconic saves of recent history.  When he finally hangs up his gloves, there will be a significant and valid argument for him as the greatest goalkeeper ever.

What's remarkable is that as little as four years ago, most who followed the game considered Buffon a spent force.  A back injury suffered during pregame warm-ups for Italy's 2010 World Cup opener against Paraguay forced him out of the tournament after only 45 minutes—a key factor in the humiliation that followed in South Africa—and kept him out for half of the subsequent season.  When he did play, he looked a shell of himself.

The 2010/11 season was the second of consecutive seventh-place finishes.  Things were so bad at Vinovo that Buffon, as he told Sky 17 months ago (h/t ESPN FC), that Buffon was considering leaving the Bianconeri and moving to Roma.

That all changed in the summer of 2011, when Buffon's former teammate and captain Antonio Conte took over for Luigi Del Neri as Juve's manager.  Juve celebrated the opening of their new stadium by roaring from seventh place to the Scudetto, going unbeaten along the way.  Buffon, now healthy, anchored a defense that only allowed 20 goals the entire season.

The next summer Buffon inherited the captaincy from the departing Alessandro Del Piero, becoming the spiritual center of the entire club as well as the on-field hinge of the defense.  As the years have gone on, Buffon has carried on a long line of Italian goalkeepers who age gracefully.

As his long-time rival for the title of Best Keeper on the Planet—Iker Casillas—declined precipitously in the last few years, Buffon has continued to play at an extraordinarily high level.  While younger men like Manuel Neuer and Thibaut Courtois are probably better on the field at the moment, Buffon is still an elite keeper and easily one of the best five in the world.

His powers were on full display on Tuesday against Manchester City.  He made five saves, including a one-on-one denial of Raheem Sterling and a fantastic double save against Sterling and David Silva three minutes after City went ahead, that kept Juve in the match—with his performance drawing praise from coach Massimiliano Allegri:

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"Buffon is an extraordinary goalkeeper, perhaps the best ever in the history of football." http://t.co/Iv8SXqJuEV pic.twitter.com/sJisTSYeKq

— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) September 16, 2015"

A pair of fantastic goals in the last 20 minutes saw Juve win their first competitive game since the Supercoppa Italiana in August.  It was a huge confidence-booster for the struggling champions, and Buffon's performance—which included a sprawling parry of a fierce long-range effort by Yaya Toure two minutes from time—was integral to it.

His shot-stopping ability, though not what it was at his absolute peak in the mid-2000s, is still elite, but what sets him apart is how he handles the rest of his duties as keeper and as captain.

Stopping shots is just one aspect of goalkeeping.  The No. 1 also has to keep command of his penalty area, claim any dangerous through balls or crosses and, perhaps most importantly, marshal the defense in front of him.

In all these aspects Buffon is exceptional.  Of the latter one, he truly has no equal.  What's even more impressive is the fact that he can keep the defense together in front of him even when running entirely different systems.

Until Juve changed to a 3-5-2 in the middle of the 2011/12 season, he had never played behind a three-man line before, but he kept the new formation just as tight as the 4-3-3 that started the year.  In the four years since, he has been able to shift between the two systems week to week—sometimes even within the same game—and keep things watertight.

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That defense has been criticized at the beginning of this season—they've given up as many goals in three games this year as they did in nine last year—but a lot of their problems have to do with the fact that the new-look midfield has too often left the team exposed after giveaways.  For the most part, the back line has been fairly organized—and they showed it in Manchester on Tuesday.

Buffon is the man who should get the ultimate credit for that.

As the season continues and this new Juventus team jells, their talisman will be there, keeping their superlative defense tight and mopping up anything that manages to leak through.  As the players further up the field learn how to play as a team, they know they can lean on their captain and that so long as he is there, the way to goal is shut.

In turn, Buffon will impart his passion—his Juventinita—into the new players and show them what wearing the black and white stripes of Turin really means.  He will tend this team as it grows, and when it flowers—and there is too much talent in this squad for it not to—he will once again have been one of the biggest contributors to its success.