Gianluigi Donnarumma, the Champion of Europe Still Waiting for His First World Cup

Gianluigi Donnarumma

Photo: Original: MichaelEmilio / Derivative work: Danyele / CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	February 25, 1999 Castellammare di Stabia
Occupation	Footballer
Honours	European Championship · Champions League
Individual awards	Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic

Gianluigi Donnarumma has won the two biggest trophies European football can give a goalkeeper, and both times he was the reason. Italy lifted the European Championship at Wembley because he saved two penalties in the shootout. Paris Saint-Germain won their first Champions League after he had knocked Liverpool out from the spot on the way to the final. FIFA has named him the best goalkeeper in the world. And yet the clubs that built their biggest nights around him keep deciding they can do without him, and the tournament every Italian keeper is measured by has never had him in it. The captain of Italy has still not played a single minute at a World Cup.

He grew up in Castellammare di Stabia, on the Bay of Naples, and learned the position in the academy of the local ASD Club Napoli. His older brother Antonio was already a goalkeeper in Milan’s youth system. Gianluigi followed him north as a young teenager, when Milan bought him from the Neapolitan club, and grew up a Milan supporter who idolised Gianluigi Buffon, the keeper whose first name he shared and whose place in the Italy goal he would one day take.

The path became visible absurdly early. Siniša Mihajlović picked him ahead of the veteran Diego López for a Serie A game against Sassuolo at San Siro on 25 October 2015. Donnarumma, whose 16th birthday had fallen on 25 February that year, was 16 years and 242 days old. Milan won 2-1 and he did not give the shirt back. Less than a year later, on 1 September 2016, he replaced Buffon at half-time of a friendly against France and became, at 17, the youngest goalkeeper ever to play for Italy. In April 2018 he became the youngest player to reach 100 Serie A appearances.

Milan is also where the other Donnarumma was born, the one Italian football has never quite forgiven. In 2017, with Mino Raiola as his agent, he announced he would not renew his contract, then signed a new deal reported at €6 million a year that also brought his brother Antonio to the club as a backup. Four years later the talks broke down again over wage and commission demands, and he left on a free transfer after 251 appearances, in the same summer Milan finally returned to the Champions League. When he came back to San Siro with Paris Saint-Germain in November 2023, Milan supporters showered the pitch with fake banknotes printed with the name “Dollarumma”.

The free transfer was agreed weeks before the tournament that defined him. At Euro 2020, played in the summer of 2021, he saved Álvaro Morata’s penalty in the semi-final against Spain, and in the final at Wembley he saved two English penalties, the last of them from Bukayo Saka, to give Italy their first European title since 1968. UEFA named him Player of the Tournament, the first goalkeeper to win it. He was 22.

Paris was supposed to be the coronation and turned into an audit. His footwork and his handling of crosses were picked apart, costly errors followed him, and Luis Enrique dropped him for a spell in favour of Matvey Safonov, a keeper more comfortable building play from the back. Donnarumma worked his way back into the side. In December 2024 a boot from Monaco’s Wilfried Singo opened a deep gash across his face that left a permanent scar. Three months later he saved penalties from Darwin Núñez and Curtis Jones to eliminate Liverpool at Anfield, then carried PSG past Aston Villa and Arsenal, and kept a clean sheet in the 5-0 win over Inter in the Munich final. PSG won the treble.

Then they let him go. That summer the club signed Lucas Chevalier, left Donnarumma out of the squad for the UEFA Super Cup and made it clear the goalkeeper of the treble no longer fitted the plan. He announced his departure the next day. On 2 September 2025 Manchester City signed him for a reported £26 million on a five-year contract to replace Ederson. Within three weeks he had kept a clean sheet on his debut, in a Manchester derby, and collected his second Yashin Trophy. In December, FIFA named him The Best Men’s Goalkeeper of 2025.

The pattern is the part his record does not explain. Two clubs he served at his best have decided he was replaceable, one by letting his contract run down and the other weeks after he had won it the trophy its owners had chased since 2011. Nobody disputes his shot-stopping. The doubt has always been whether a keeper his size, more reflex than architect, belongs in the possession systems the richest clubs now play. His first season in Manchester ended with a domestic cup double in which he did not play a minute, and with Arsenal taking the Premier League title by seven points.

That leaves Italy, where the debt is heaviest. On 31 March 2026, in Zenica, Italy drew 1-1 with Bosnia and Herzegovina in the World Cup play-off final and lost the shootout 4-1. Donnarumma, who had won Italy a European Championship from the spot, did not save any of Bosnia’s penalties, and the Azzurri missed a third consecutive World Cup. He said afterwards that he had cried “because of the disappointment of not being able to lead Italy where it deserves to be”. When reports suggested the players had asked for a qualification bonus, he answered as captain: “I never went to ask the Italian national team for a single euro.” Gennaro Gattuso left the job days later.

The months since have been a reset on both fronts. Pep Guardiola stepped down at City and Enzo Maresca took over in June, with Donnarumma as his vice-captain. City won their first five league matches, and in September he tipped a Bryan Mbeumo volley around the post to protect a 1-0 derby win over Manchester United, a save shortlisted for the Premier League’s award of the month. In July he married Alessia Elefante, his partner since 2017 and the mother of their son Leo, in Locorotondo, in Puglia.

Italy, meanwhile, went back to the coach who first made him their No 1. Roberto Mancini returned in July on a contract running to 2030 and kept the armband on Donnarumma in his first Nations League squad. At the end of September an independent commission found Manchester City guilty of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules; sanctions are still to be decided and the club has promised an appeal. His own question has a date on it. He will be 31 when the 2030 World Cup opens in Spain, Portugal and Morocco, and the only way to close the one gap in his record is to take Italy there himself.

Tags: sports, athletes, footballers, Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan, Roberto Mancini, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Italy national football team