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Daily Record
Daily Record
Sport
Mark McDougall

How Gianluigi Buffon ended up in Rangers goalkeeper kit for famous Ibrox clash

He's one of the best goalkeepers that has ever played the game and Rangers fans would have loved to have seen Gianluigi Buffon in their shirt.

The thing is, they did. For one game anyway, and might not even have realised.

With a career that stretches back to 1995, Buffon has been at the top of the game for the majority of that with more than 600 appearances for Juventus.

Prior to that he played 220 games for Parma as part of their incredible team of the late 1990s with players such as Lillian Thuram and Fabio Cannavaro.

In 1999 he arrived in Glasgow to play for the Serie A giants against Rangers in the Champions League, but it didn't go all to plan with a kit problem for the Italian goalkeeper.

Parma had a black goalkeeper top at the time and the referee wasn't willing to let him wear it because it clashed with him and the Italians had no back up.

Naturally, there was then a rush to get Buffon a top to wear for the game and he ended up wearing one of Stefan Klos', who was his opposite number that night.

The Ibrox stopper regularly wore orange that season and in the Rangers megastore at the stadium, it was printed with Buffon's name and the crest, sponsor and make of Parma strips was added as well.

Rangers would go on to win the game 2-0 with goals from Tony Vidmar and Claudio Reyna and made it to the group stage after a 1-0 defeat away from home.

It was a game that Buffon clearly remember because when asked about great stadiums he played in during his career, he said: “There are a lot of them.

“Definitely Anfield, in Liverpool, that was one of the few stadiums - along with Rangers in Glasgow and Fenerbahce in Istanbul - where there was such commotion for the first 15-20 minutes that I had trouble concentrating."

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