ROME – He couldn't have known it at the time, but when Parma coach Nevio Scala first took a chance on an unproven teenager two decades ago, he'd change the landscape of Italian football and unwittingly introduce the world to one of the modern era's most important players.

 Gianliugi Buffon was just 17 years, nine months and 22 days old when he pulled on his gloves to face AC Milan in November 1995, but watching him you'd never have known it. Pitted against Fabio Capello's imperious Rossoneri, the debutant goalkeeper denied Roberto Baggio, Zvonimir Boban and George Weah with a performance that exuded confidence and class. There were improbable clearances, diving saves, and a brash, exhilarating hint of what was to come from a player who had wanted to be a midfielder and grew up worshipping Marco Tardelli.

 A lot has changed since then. Parma has been wiped out twice, first by the Parmalat scandal and then by bankruptcy, and Milan are no longer the pre-eminent force in European football. Everyone else who took to the pitch that day has long s ince hung up their boots, but Buffon remains centre-stage, one of Serie A's elder statesmen and still perhaps the most important player for Juventus and the Italian national team.

 Six league titles, two runner-up medals in the Champions League, a World Cup, helping to resurrect Juve after Calciopoli when he could have left Turin rather than suffering the ignominy of playing in Serie B – it was all brought into sharp focus recently when a a 16-year-old who shares his first name started between the posts for the Rossoneri.

 Gianluigi Donnarumma is scarcely old enough to remember his idol's debut in the winter of '95 – or the great Milan side that he denied in that 0-0 draw at the Stadio Ennio Tardini. How the 16-year-old would like to have Christian Panucci, Alessandro Costacurta, Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini in front of him now as he prepares to face the Bianconeri, who despite their problems this season still have the ability to terrorise in front of goal.

 But though it will be scant comfort to Milanisti, the fact that the current Milan defence are nowhere near as accomplished as their predecessors has only served to highlight Donnarumma's potential. His debut against Sassuolo – a 2-1 win – lacked the show-stopping quality of Buffon's first game, but the Campania native has followed it up with several excellent performances that belie his age, not least in the Rossoneri's 0-0 draw with Atalanta when he was by some margin Milan's best player. It's been an impressive start for the youngest goalkeeper to take to a pitch in Italy's top flight for 35 years.

 The experienced hands of Diego Lopez had struggled but his teenage usurper is having no such problems. He's even managed three clean sheets – a feat beyond the Spaniard's capabilities so far this season. Sinisa Mihajlovic's decision to drop the ex-Real Madrid man looked like a huge gamble at the time, but it's paying off. The Serbian has already called his young keeper “the future of Italian football,” and though that might be a little bombastic, it's very tempting to picture him at the heart of a Rossoneri renaissance in the coming years.

 Confidence is everything between the posts, and it's something that Donnarumma radiates. Tall and physically imposing, there's little about his stature to hint at the fact he's still young enough to be in school. His gangly frame occasionally gets in his way, but the early signs suggest an agile player with a clear tactical and positional awareness who isn't afraid to put his body on the line or make himself heard among more experienced teammates.

 At his age, inconsistency and some teething problems are inevitable however, and there's a real danger that fans and pundits will demand too much, too soon. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of a potentially era-defining talent, but there is an enormous gulf between where Donnarumma is right now and what Buffon has achieved, and he'll need more than just raw ability to cross it.

 After all, SuperGigi is super for a reason. He's played more minutes for Juventus than anyone else – he broke Alessandro Del Piero's record of 48,794 minutes in the recent Champions League draw with Borussia Monchengladbach – and he's Italy's most capped player with 154 and counting. But more than all that, Buffon's most valuable contributions have come as a man. Like his friend Francesco Totti at Roma, Juve's No.1 can't just be summed up by statistics or trophies, his real value is as a reference point for fans and teammates, the predictably superb leader, year after year, a brilliant constant in an ever-more capricious sport.

 Scala can't have known how much Buffon would influence Italian football when he started the 17-year-old all those years ago, and there's no way of predicting what the future holds for Donnarumma. It's disrespectful to the Italy captain to draw too many comparisons with someone so untested, and unfair on his would-be successor to demand he shoulder such expectation. But if Milan's brightest new star can emulate even a fraction of his hero's career, then he has a lot to look forward to. We do too.

 This article originally appeared on Gazzettaworld.gazzetta.it