[kurtsimonw]

(IMG:http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/4129/00301maldinia.th.jpg)

I'm getting one very soon !!!!

GRANDE CAPITANO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/king.gif)

(P.S to Tennie i will be wearing it at the Milan - Roma game espically)

That's a fantastic shirt!

[whoarethepatriot...]

I was flicking through facebook just now, and something interesting caught my eye, Paolo Maldini to take charge of the youth system?

I seriously do not know how reliable this is, but it would be great if he stayed on

[Tennie]

(Fishdoll is afraid of Facebook).

I just peeked, whoarethepatriots, and milannews is running a story saying the same thing. It may just be rumor at this point, but I'm relatively certain that Maldini will stay on with Milan in some position or another.

[whoarethepatriot...]

I sincerely hope he does, not necessarily as a coach or assistant, but to remain in some capacity or another

Im sure whatever happens we wont know for sure until his last game

[dst]

a God comp

**** me, why does it have to end? Only two games left! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cry.gif)

[Zed.D]

Maldini's career records and statistics are nothing special...





























Because special is such a cheap adjective to use to describe this unbelievable man and his achievements. a new adj has to be invented for him!

I was reading acmilan.com's articles on Maldini and his records and statistics and it astonished me! sometimes I (/we) forget what he has done over the years...

I feel unlucky that I was born in '86.

[MizNelson]

Here are a pair of Maldini signatures I whipped up last night. You're free to use them if you wish.

(IMG:http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/7207/maldinisig.jpg)

(IMG:http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/9427/jerseys.jpg)

[Tennie]

They're lovely, Miz. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/96.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/96.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/96.gif)

THANK YOU!

[Zed.D]

Very nice, Miz. thanks.

[Ro Rossonera]

The writer of the Milan offside blog, Gianfranco, this season has done a special thing every Monday titled Maldini Monday's. He asked this guy Brian Phillips, who writes for a blog called the run of play, to write up a Tuesday portrait on Maldini and this is what he came up with. It was amazing (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cry.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cry.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cry.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cry.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cry.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cry.gif)

The Tuesday Portrait: Paolo Maldini

(IMG:http://i41.tinypic.com/231ged.jpg)

More than any other footballer he seems to have sprung from the serious imagination of a child. The world he belongs to is not the rough, touchy, deceiving world of grown-up risks and chances but a world of lucid justice and simplicity. And just as a child's prayerbook suggests a high-up fairness in the external order of things, a cloudlike God at the roof of the cosmos dispensing rewards to the virtuous, so his career seems to have unfolded at the center of a halo inside which blessings fall on those who deserve them, power emanates from wisdom, and the beautiful is a manifestation of the good.

Now, there's a sense in which football is always giving off intimations of this sort of world, and in that sense the feeling it gives us resembles not so much a childish sense of right as a peasant's consent to hierarchy, doomed to exalt the bearers of an unfathomable grace. There's a danger in that feeling, which may explain why, in a democracy, the press is always set against footballers and against that exaltation—the more angrily and vulgarly against it the more of the people the press styles itself to be. So in a way the innocence of football is cowed on both sides and awakens a terrific resentment. But in Maldini's case none of that seems to apply. He's simply permitted a space of innocence, as if the system needed one true shining prince, as a bathtub drain, so to speak.

Fancifully, because who knows whether philosophy matters to the body's moving parts, I've always thought it was this forthrightness, this way of living directly and without the frictions and reverses of a life of unclear purpose, that accounted for his amazing longevity. At almost 41 he plays like a 28-year-old and looks permanently established in the main of light. He made his first senior start for Milan on the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in for his second term in office, two weeks before the current king of derided tabloid idols was even born. Cristiano Ronaldo was named after Ronald Reagan, whom his father adored, but Maldini (whose middle name is Cesare, his father's name) was named after a dynasty. And belongs to one.

His retirement, which is now only days away, strikes me as having an actual tragedy in it, because it's the one accommodation he's ever had to make to the indifference of the world to meaning. If meaning were everything he could go on playing forever, racing marvelously down the left side of the pitch to pluck the ball from attackers half his age, keeping his cool and keeping his team alert to the objective. But meaning has no purchase on the sinews, and virtue has no existence in the physical world, and he, too, will be tossed upon rough seas. His pace is already gone, and his unassuming lightness of touch, always so strange and breathtaking in a defender as powerful as he was, would only be a little easier to sustain than the strength that, through innumerable scuffles, supported it.

And the tragedy of this is that his growing old gives the lie to the vision of the world that his career almost made us believe in. Beauty isn't goodness and power isn't wisdom, even if, in the world's haphazard mergings, they might briefly coexist. Blessings are arbitrary, even if they sometimes fall where they're deserved. Still, illusory though it may have been, the fullness of the congruence he achieved made him a consolation, and we'll remember him for that, and it will color what we mean when we say he was better at what he did than anyone who ever played the game. Almost without trying, he made us perceive a world that was better than the world we knew.

[Bluesummers]

Is Lippi going to let him play with Italy one last time? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

This post has been edited by Bluesummers: May 22 2009, 11:14 AM

[Zed.D]

Is Lippi going to let him play with Italy one last time? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

To quote dst, he's God! he is going to let Lippi play him for Italy one last time

[6Best]

Maldini : I hope to do well against Roma

Milan legend Paolo Maldini will retire at the end of the season and will play his last ever home match against Roma this weekend at the San Siro. The game is expected to be an exciting affair, that will honour the player's fantastic career.

"At present, I am a man living through very strong emotions," the 40-year-old revealed to Milan Channel.

"I see this time as a great feast of the past 25 years. I will have my family and friends by my side. I hope to have the strength to play a good match and win, then celebrate with all the people who have wished me well."

The defender then suggested who he believes should take over the captain's armband for the Rossoneri.

"There is a moment in life when one must take on more responsibility and Ricardo [Kaka], it seems, will remain here for a long time," he continued.

"It is right that he aspires to become captain and he has the personality to do it."

Maldini recently made his 900th appearance for the club in all competitions. He made his Serie A debut in 1985 against Udinese.

[anano1214]

(IMG:http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/4129/00301maldinia.th.jpg)

I'm getting one very soon !!!!

GRANDE CAPITANO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/king.gif)

(P.S to Tennie i will be wearing it at the Milan - Roma game espically)

can i buy it online?

[kurtsimonw]

can i buy it online?

Yes, here.

I can't believe I'm going to miss (at least most of) his last ever home game. Stupid Premier League playing final games on Sundays. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/dry.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)