paolo maldini ..this is a football LEGEND ........

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/mai...-mostviewedbox


WHAT A PLAYER AND MAN

The new Gary Neville

Why caps lock? I bet you go around shouting at everything.

Originally Posted by Fuzzy Dunlop

Why caps lock? I bet you go around shouting at everything.

£#%&! off

Originally Posted by puressence

£#%&! off

he hinted.

Originally Posted by </forzagarza>

The new Gary Neville

Ay the old one is £#%&!ed by the looks of things.

Is he? I never realised that until you posted this.

Originally Posted by Rhodzy

Is he? I never realised that until you posted this.

like to keep you in the loop rhodzy

legend is an overused word.

Maldini is a full on legend.

I know this got posted before

But it looks like his lad has the knack too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1wvou4gals

Originally Posted by thatsfuctit

I know this got posted before

But it looks like his lad has the knack too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1wvou4gals

Nice music

Only Giggs is comparable at the top end of the modern game imo.

Maldini the one and only bows out

The Milan legend retires at the end of the season with records in the game that will go unmatched

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Paolo Maldini after Milan's victory over Liverpool in the 2007 Champions League final

Paolo Maldini, Milan legend, is about to wave goodbye for the last time as a player. Photograph: Shaun Botterill/Getty Images Sport

The year is 1985. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev are figureheads of the cold war. At Heysel Stadium 39 spectators are killed at the European Cup final. Live Aid concerts raise £50m for victims of famine in Ethiopia. DNA is first used in a criminal case. Roger Moore steps down as James Bond. And a 16-year-old coltish defender with a famous name makes his debut for Milan at half-time in a Serie A match at Udinese.

He is the son of Cesare Maldini, a former European Cup-winning captain for the club. He trots on at half-time and glides through his overture on impressively long, strong, limbs. He looks calm, classy, eminently comfortable. Milan's fans reckon young Paolo is a chip off the old block. Some 25 seasons later, his footballing achievements beggar belief.

This weekend the 41-year-old pulls on the shirt of the club he joined at the age of 10 for the 901st time. With more than 1,000 professional matches under his belt – every single one of them in the rossonero of Milan or the azzurro of Italy – Maldini will make his farewell bow at San Siro. His career has cranked on and on, past so many milestones (they announced they would retire his No3 shirt several years ago) it is hard to know where to begin honouring the end. The club's official website has tried to sum it up with a simple tribute that has run all week long: 25 SEASONS. 900 GAMES. ALWAYS AND ONLY MILAN. GRAZIE PAOLO!

A quarter of a century in the first team of any club is a staggering enough feat. To do it at one of the world's elite teams, sweeping up five European Cup medals and seven Serie A titles along the way, sets a benchmark that looks unmatchable. To put it into perspective, 35-year-old Ryan Giggs would have to play on for Manchester United for another seven years to equal Maldini's length of service. Real Madrid's Raúl, who turns 32 in the summer, will need to continue for another 10 years. This is a man who has won the European Cup in three different decades.

There will be no special party. It is his choice. He just wants to use the last two games of the season to say goodbye, first to the people who love him at San Siro, then to the greater family of Italian football with an away game at Fiorentina. The man has always done things with irresistible, understated charm.

And that is the real legacy of Maldini. The statistics only tell part of the story. They don't tell you anything about the elegance and gallantry with which he played. All the negative stereotypes of Italian defensive arts – niggling and pinching and sly shirt tugging – were unnecessary for Maldini. Probably the best left-back ever created played purely as well as powerfully.

He has so much going for him it is hard to know if he is more adored by the men or women of Italy. But Maldini has never been big-headed. Always professional. His reaction to his landmark 1,000th game (a 0–0 draw at Parma) said it all: "These are numbers which will remain in history – too bad we did not get the three points."

So what next for Il Capitano? Milan are almost certain to find a role for him within the club if he wants it. Likewise the Italian Football Federation. But he will take a well-deserved summer holiday. "I want to pull the plug out for a little while, at least until September. Only then will I think about what to do with my future." That is unlikely to be in coaching, though, which he describes as "the job which unites all the things that I don't like about football together".

The end of the fairytale? Not necessarily. The third generation of Milan's Maldini dynasty, Paolo's 13-year-old son Christian, plays for the club's junior ranks, and over one million people have viewed a video of his youngest, Daniel, effortlessly dispossessing Clarence Seedorf on YouTube.

If Paolo gets half as much contentment watching his boys as Cesare did, it won't just be Milan who are the lucky ones. Watching the recordman throughout his extraordinary career has been a pleasure for all of us.

he'll be at city next season.

Such a shame he didn't win the World Cup with Italy. Retired a year before they done it, didn't he?

just reading in the paper some Milan fans not happy with him and there was a banner there yesterday about him lacking "respect for those who made you rich."

Anyone know what that's about ?

Originally Posted by wee man

just reading in the paper some Milan fans not happy with him and there was a banner there yesterday about him lacking "respect for those who made you rich."

Anyone know what that's about ?

He told some of them in the airport to go and watch Inter.

MALDINI RETIRES

Maldini's Milan farewell marred by unhappy fans

May 24, 2009

Paolo Maldini's final appearance at the San Siro was marred by AC Milan ultra fans unveiling a banner criticising their captain on Sunday.

His day was already ruined by Milan losing 3-2 to AS Roma and they must now avoid defeat at Fiorentina in Sunday's final game of the campaign to secure a berth in next season's Champions League group stages.

The 40-year-old Maldini, who will bid farewell to soccer in Florence after a 24-year career, took a lap of honour around the stadium after the match but not all the Rossoneri fans cheered.

"Thank you captain. On the field you were a never-ending champion but you lacked respect for those who made you rich," read one huge banner, which media reports said referred to a falling out between fans and the player in 2005.

Some supporters then began a chant of "there's only one captain" when another banner displaying the name and number of Franco Baresi was unfurled.

Former Milan captain Baresi passed the armband on to Maldini when he retired.

One-club man Maldini, who will make his 902nd Milan appearance against Fiorentina, shrugged off the protests.

"I'm proud I'm not one of them," he told reporters.

The rest of the Rossoneri fans waved special Maldini scarves while Roma players came back on the pitch at the end wearing T-shirts hailing the defender, who won a record 126 caps for Italy before quitting the international game in 2002.

Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti said the banners had been "insignificant".

Milan owner and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, present at the stadium, was also jeered by home fans with uncertainty continuing over whether Ancelotti will stay at the club next season.

Ancelotti, strongly linked with Chelsea in the media, refused to discuss his future and said a Champions League group stage spot was the priority following their failure to qualify for this season's competition.

"There's no reason to talk about my future. There's still something to play for and we'll talk after the game in Florence," he said.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/st...urope&&cc=5739

They sound like a right bunch of @#%&!s to be honest. The same kind of #@&%!s who shamefully booed Giggs a few years back

Milanese sausage jockeys?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/8066004.stm

The final image is a nice touch

They like their long banners in Italy don't they?

Like that Inter one. 'Well done Manchester, you deserved to win but we had several chances and could have taken the lead if it weren't for poor finishing. Yet you were below par and still managed to squeeze through and if we're honest, you should have scored a few in the first leg. Congratulations and see you next year perhaps'.

It was something like that anyway.