With Julio Cesar set to retire this weekend after playing the final game of his career, he has pinpointed his Champions League semi-final save on Lionel Messi as his most important.
That crucial stop helped Inter to a 3-2 aggregate victory over Barcelona in the 2010 edition of the competition, allowing Jose Mourinho’s side to advance to the Madrid final against Bayern Munich.
There, Cesar and co. wrote their name into Inter folklore forever by beating the Bundesliga side 2-0 thanks to a Diego Milito brace but they may not have gotten there without their Brazilian star’s semi-final heroics.
“When people talk to me about my career, everyone always talks about the save from Messi in the Champions League semi-final and maybe they are right about that,” he reflected in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport.
“In that game, at that time, against that opponent… it probably was. One of the first things that they teach us as goalkeepers is that a save is only a beautiful one if it is important. That was very important.
“It brought me one of the best moments of my life. Madrid was obviously the highest point of my entire career.”
One goalkeeper has been in the news plenty over the course of the past week in Gianluigi Buffon and his old Serie A foe has a degree of sympathy for the 40-year-old following the controversy at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu.
“It was a penalty that could have been given sometimes and not given at other times and if you are the referee, you can also perhaps look away and opt not to send Buffon off,” he added.
“That said, Gigi could probably have expressed himself in a different way and I think that he has acknowledged that. When you have so much adrenaline going through you, you can say things that you regret later.
“It happened to me. In 2011, I said almost everything to [Gianluca] Rocchi (in a 3-0 win for Napoli over Inter) when I saved a [Marek] Hamsik penalty and [Hugo] Campagnaro scored a rebound despite encroaching into the penalty area.
“Something similar also happened with [Nicola] Rizzoli (during a Milan derby in 2012) after he whistled for a non-existent foul on [Kevin-Prince] Boateng and in fact, he even said publicly since that he was wrong.”
