Not for long

(which is not saying Rino is a loose cannon)

In any case I do believe he is a far better choice than Kaladze. Much more crucial to the team and a better leader.

In any case Rino is the successor for the arm band. I think Kaka will make it to being our captain, but he is definately not in that level right now, and this isn't based on his potential as a player.

Sh1t my gun discharged... there's blood all over the place... if only...

Well the current Milan order for succession is...

Paolo-->Ambro-->Rino-->Kala

looool *rushes over to make a mouth-to-mouth desperately!*

what about nesta? he has experience (just a suggestion, nothing major)

Kaka will take another 4 years to reach that level, right now for all this amazing talent he still is a little green. I'm personally not completely convinced about Rino, but I think maybe it's because I'm comparing all possible successors to Paolo.

This might be a bit out of the blue but I was thinking maybe we could plug in Seedorf for skipper, actually both him and Rino are alike. But I do believe they are equally qualified for it, Seedorf for all his faults is a team man, and vocally adept. He doesn't fly off the hook as easily as Rino(which is not saying Rino is a loose cannon), and I think Seedorf's current laziness is the only thing you can hold against Clarence.

In any case I do believe he is a far better choice than Kaladze. Much more crucial to the team and a better leader.

i don't know.. i think he can be a bit too agressive sometimes  , but anyways i would prefer Dida to be our captain

Why is nobody thinking Nesta!!?   

Cause Nesta is a Lazialle at heart and like it or not that's where he will play his final few years

Fu ck you!!

No he won't if we give him the brand!! 

Like we gave the band to Sheva? 

He had made up his mind while Alessandro just needs to feel he's important!! Plus he deserves it. I can't see why Seedorf should take it and Nesta shouldn't; he's giving his best in every game and "rossonerity" is not countable...

(or that's just me talking)

Come on Nesta stay at the San Siro forever!!

I can't tell han...

I don't know what's happening inside him, he might want to stay. I can't be certain that he'll leave as I'd never though I'd see Sheva play for another team!! Plus there's always the Lolito factor; nobody likes that as shole down there at Rome...

I can only hope!!

 

Galliani has told the fans that he would rather cut off his hand than allow Kakà to leave Milan.

I would cut off my hand before I would allow Kakà to leave Milan,’ affirmed Milan chief executive Adriano Galliani. ‘Kakà doesn’t need to respond to any questions about his future, I will respond. Ricky signed a five-year contract with Milan and he is not leaving Milan for any reason. In any case, he is happy to be a Rossoneri and we will continue to build our team around him. I believe that the Rossoneri fans can have a calm Christmas in this regard.’

Galliani then spoke about the team: ‘I repeat, the injuries are our real problem. Even today Kakà was in doubt until the last minute and there are still seven out. Then, as some of the players return this can be seen in the results. The team understand that the clock is ticking down and that we can’t lose any more points. The teams ahead of us in the table have slowed down. We will strike at Udine. We want the Champions League.’

A final word: ‘I asked my players for two victories in the last two games.’
acmilan.com

have you seen this: Robinho, Cannavaro and Diarra and money for Kaka!
I'd still definitely say NO... because money is not everything... I'd never let go of Kaka for even Ronaldinho...

For the simple reason that Kakà is much better than Ronaldinho.

Faith guides Milan's Brazilian boy blessed from on high
DAN BRENNAN

IN 1999, Arsene Wenger travelled to Brazil to watch a few matches in the company of his old friend and former team-mate, Jose Fuentes, by then one of Brazil's top agents. Fuentes suggested a Sao Paulo under-16 match, as there were several promising youngsters who might be of interest. The performance of a diminutive, and decidedly frail looking midfielder by the name of Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite went completely unnoticed.

Like the man at Decca who turned down the Beatles for a record deal, he must surely kick himself every time he recalls how he let Kaka - for it was he - slip from right under his nose. But then, Wenger was not alone in overlooking the teenager's nascent talents.
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"Until he turned 19, Kaka was essentially an unknown player beyond his club," explains Breno Tannuri, a leading Brazilian football lawyer, who has worked with Kaka. "I think the first time people really started to take notice was in the final of the Copa Rio between São Paulo and Botafogo [in 2001]. He came off the bench and scored two fantastic goals to help win the game."

That was only half the story. The game against Botafogo was Kaka's first match in a year. And the fact that he was able to play at all was nigh on miraculous. In 2000, he smashed his head on the bottom of a swimming pool, fracturing one of his spinal vertebrae. The accident threatened to leave him paralysed. "The doctors said I was very lucky to recover," Kaka later recalled.

The fact that Kaka managed to become a footballer in the first place is, in itself, something of a miracle. Born with a bone deficiency that stunted his growth throughout his childhood, he also suffers from myopia which means he needs to wear contact lenses on the pitch. And, then there is the matter of his quintessentially middle-class background, a far cry from the poverty of the favelas that have produced so many of Brazil's top footballers over the decades.

Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite was born in Brasilia on 15 May 1982. When he was four, his engineer father Bosco uprooted the family to Cuiaba, Brazil's hottest city, but a million miles from its main football hotbeds. It was only when Bosco's work took them to Sao Paulo, and, an apartment located a stone's throw from the Morumbi stadium, that Kaka's destiny began to take shape.

"We got a call from the school," recalls Bosco. "They said he was talented, and got him into a team for seven to eight-year-olds called Alphaville that reached a local final. That got him noticed and he was invited to enrol at Sao Paulo."

Despite his frail and diminutive build - a result of his bone condition - Kaka was soon being asked to play with kids a year older than him. "He stood out immediately as a player who would bring big returns to Sao Paulo," recalls Milton Cruz, now Sao Paulo's assistant manager, who coached Kaka from the age of 13. "He was so small and thin, but I could tell he had talent. He was intelligent, he could see connections. But he wasn't strong enough at first, the ball was bigger than his legs! I remember one time he wanted to take a penalty and I wondered if he'd have the strength to kick it as far as the goal! He caught my attention, though.

"You could tell he was different," adds Cruz. "He was always asking for advice, always keen to improve. I remember telling him that he needed to learn how to play with both moulded studs and screw-ins because in Europe the players use different ones depending on the conditions. The next day he was training with fixed studs."

Sao Paulo worked hard at building him up, putting him on a special diet and making him do extra physical workouts from the age of 14. "He was determined to get bigger and become strong enough to compete with older children. He always ate well and did what he was told in the gym. He never missed any sessions and never cheated when nutritionists gave him a special diet to build him up," adds Cruz.

By the age of 17, when he completed school, the physical training and application had paid off, as Sao Paulo offered him a first contract. According to Carlinhos Neves, the club's physical fitness coach, and a close friend of Kaka's family, it is his intelligence that marks out him from many of his peers.

He had originally contemplated following his father into engineering, and has spoken recently about going on to do an MBA once he stops playing.

"He has a cultural level that a lot of players lack," says Neves. "He studied hard and went to good schools. He has access to the things that the middle classes in Brazil have access to, but are denied to most people in our country. His hero is Rai [the Sao Paulo legend, who also hailed from a middle-class family], both for his football and for the way he has lived his life. But I would say that [Rai] was a little more intellectual.

"Quite simply, he has a broader vision than most players. He's able to think things out clearly. He's centred. He knows how to deal with the demands of his situation and with all the attention. He's always polite and always has time for everyone. He doesn't think he's special. He has this quality that draws people towards him."

Kaka's Sao Paulo team-mates jokingly referred to him as "playboy" - which in Brazil means someone who is white, middle class - and "mummy's boy". But his popularity was never in question. In fact, his family apartment became a second home for many of his fellow players. "We'd go and play football and video games, or to eat together," says Juan Maldonado Jaimes Junior, one of Kaka's former Sao Paulo teammates. "Some players even went there when Kaka was away. His family were very welcoming to us."

"Players would often spend the weekends with us," adds Bosco. "They were from the interior and after training all week they had nowhere to go. Kaka used to invite them back. Sometimes we'd have as many as eight kids staying. Even today, my wife gets calls from players all over Brazil saying, 'hi, Aunt Simone, how are you?'"

In February 2002, while still at Sao Paulo, Kaka was signed up to be one of the faces of Armani. "Kaka has the perfect image for Emporio [Armani]. He is young, he is wholesome, he carries himself well and there is a simplicity about him," says André Brett, former Armani brand manager in Brazil. "Within the world of sport, he is the man who best fitted our concept."

The icon status was not new. Even as a youth player at Sao Paulo, Kaka was inundated with fan mail, primarily from female admirers. His mother, Simone used to respond to all the letters. But as his fame grew, she recalled, "things went crazy"; fans would flock to the family apartment, and the deluge of mail, teddy bears and even pants from admiring female fans became too much.

Not that Kaka - possibly the nearest thing football has to Cliff Richard - took advantage of the adulation. He is a devout Christian, his faith crystallised by that near-death experience in the pool. Whenever he scores, he eschews wild celebrations, instead raising his fingers to the heavens, and occasionally revealing a t-shirt bearing the legend "I belong to Jesus'". Ahead of his marriage to teenage sweetheart Carolina in December 2005, he proudly admitted to being a virgin. And he donates 10% of all his earnings to the Church. "I don't miss it. God has given me more," he says.

These days of course, that is 10% of quite a lot. Within a month of moving to Milan in 2003, for a £5m fee that then president Silvio Berlusconi subsequently described as "peanuts", Kaka had established himself as a regular at the heart of the Rossoneri midfield. In the space of the past three years, he has cemented his reputation as one of the finest playmakers in the business. Last year, when a poll by the respected Brazilian football magazine O Globo asked who was the best player in the world, Kaka garnered 81.5% of the votes (Ronaldinho polled a paltry 11%).

Even against the backdrop the Moggigate scandal, which saw Milan docked eight points and ruled out of the race for the Scudetto, Kaka has been in a fine vein of form. And he says that the problems merely serve to heighten the team's sense of purpose. "The difficulties at the start of the season meant our objectives changed," he said last week. "We're used to fighting for the title, but this season we're fighting for a place in the Champions League. That has made this year's Champions League more important; we are really playing to win."

And this is a young man who is used to achieving his goals. While recovering from that injury in 2000, having narrowly escaped paralysis, Kaka made a list of ten things he wanted to accomplish in his career. The first was simply to play football again. At the bottom of the list was a desire to play for Brazil and to win a move to a big club in Italy or Spain. By 2003, he had achieved all ten. In comparison, his target for this season seems relatively modest.

"Quite simply, he has a broader vision than most players. He's able to think things out clearly. He's centred. He knows how to deal with the demands of his situation and with all the attention. He's always polite and always has time for everyone. He doesn't think he's special. He has this quality that draws people towards him."

He is a devout Christian, his faith crystallised by that near-death experience in the pool. Whenever he scores, he eschews wild celebrations, instead raising his fingers to the heavens, and occasionally revealing a t-shirt bearing the legend "I belong to Jesus'". Ahead of his marriage to teenage sweetheart Carolina in December 2005, he proudly admitted to being a virgin. And he donates 10% of all his earnings to the Church. "I don't miss it. God has given me more," he says.