Hereunder the declarations of Paolo Maldini during the press conference which was held today at San Siro.

MILAN – “The last match in Florence was nice to reach the third place and from a personal level, what happened at the Franchi was an honour to have received the affection from the fans and from my team-mates.

“I am and will always remain a Rossonero fan, sincerely this is an huge chance. Kaka is the first player of a certain level to be sold, in the past such an idea was never taken into consideration. He’s one of the five best players in the world, just like Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. This decision was taken badly by my team-mates and the fans.

“Looking at the accounts is logical, but it’s also logical to fix reachable objectives, thinking of winning the Champions League without Kaka is a utopian objective. There is an important change, but I have the hope that this team remains always at the top. The difficulties of the transfer market are in choosing the players who allow you to make the quality jump, the purchasing power of Italian football changed, and the teams who have the strong players are holding on to them. As a player, when Baresi quit, I felt almost lost, I was missing a morale and physical support, I was seeing a black future, but then the club worked well and everything started again. We had many farewells and this team always started again greatly with bigger objectives. Milan’s story goes on. The investments of the Italian teams are not the same as the English or Spanish ones, we have teams who play well at football and to survive they must look at the balance and less at the game. Milan had success because to win n Europe you don’t need to be physically strong, but you must impose the game.

“Ronaldinho will have many responsibilities for next season, last year he was not the real leader and this responsibility can do him well. I don’t know the market strategies of Milan. Our team with two or three retouches could have been great, losing Kaka we must aim on other players and we must see what team will be set for July 6 at Milanello and put in the hands of Leonardo. Even he will have to test himself, it’s a bet and Milan won them in the past, the hope is that even this time it can reach a good result.

“I believe the enthusiasm is fundamental to arrive to certain results, I don’t think that the Milan transfer market is over, it has just started. Pirlo? I think it’s too early to consider him a player of a certain age since he’s only 30 years old, I don’t know the details and I don’t know the club’s thought, I think that before leaving Milan he will think about it not 10 times, but at least 100 times. I don’t think that there is a soap opera like with Kaka for Pato, he’s 19-years-old, has an extraordinary talent and so Pato must remain here.

“It’s important to have a Youth Sector with a club’s line to pull out important players. There will be Filippo Galli who I consider a capable person. We started late but the results will be seen in three or five years.

“I don’t know who will be the Milan captain, the idea could have been that it was Ambrosini due to the rules we have always given ourselves, but the choice could also be taken by the coach. Everything will depend from the management of Leonardo, I don’t see it as a big problem.

“Berlusconi said some things which I agree with regards to what happened on Sunday during Milan-Roma. The club is not identifiable in just one person, Milan are the fans, the players and the directors. Berlusconi’s words put me at ease. He said things I would have liked to hear after the Roma game. With regards to the response announcement of Galliani, maybe he took it personally, but I didn’t want to put it personally. Guardiola’s gesture after the final in Rome was very nice: him winning the Champions League and a minute later he thinks about me…no I will not go to Barcelona, even though the thing pleased me a lot. The dedication arrived even though I only spoke to Guardiola two or three times as an opponent because some game, I’m not his friend, therefore it was all dictated by the sentiment and the heart. Barcelona arrived in Italy on Monday, they saw what happened the previous Sunday at San Siro and there were shocked. Milan-Roma and the banners? I felt bad at first, but going back home, after 200 people came to celebrate me, what remained mostly in my head was the full stadium with all those scarves exposed to the sky for me. It was a confirmation of the fact that what I had I deserve it on the pitch and I never asked for anything to anyone, despite having an important surname. What has been said about my name when I was a small kid hurt me, but it helped me to grow. I don’t think that Berlusconi has any intention to sell, I think that he will continue. In the past there have been moments of refounding with many players who stop, there have been minor objectives before always returning to great targets.

“My future? It’s the management of my family life, I did not make any commitments with anyone, I received some offers from my historical sponsors. From Milan nothing, but there’s time, it doesn’t mean that a great player can be a great director, but I know this environment well. I wouldn’t like to put just my face, the youth sector was offered to me, but it’s not my aspiration and I think that they must be people who have a certain experience and I don’t have.

“I’m serene and happy to have fulfilled myself in the profession I love and as a person. I’m prudent on the future, even though there’s a small question mark right now. I never thought about changing shirt during my career due to my faithfulness to these colours, and this for a young player like Santon could be a very nice story. The players at times are forced to leave. I think that I will realize this when the teams will be during their training camp in mid-July. If I had listened to my children, I should have gone forward for five or six more years. They were very attached to Ricky for his technical qualities and he has a strange effect on the children. Even they will not have any difficulty to remain always Milanisti.

“It was a very beautiful last year. I played a sport I love in a wonderful environment, nothing could scratch and touch what I did in the past, a year without winning cannot damage my career. The best moment of my career is not only one, but two or three at the fullest of my capacity. I remember the first and second year of Capello, the year with Zaccheroni, even with Ancelotti in 2003 and 2004, but also with Sacchi, because I formed myself and reached the national team. The passion was at the base of everything, trying to always improve, in the long run it became a challenge with myself. In football you grow from the human level, you learn the respect towards others, at 16 years of age I used to work in a world of adults and it was a growth which brought me to be a respected person, the real spring is the passion for the sport. I had many positive examples and from them I tried to learn, the important thing is the family and I had close to me who managed me and gave an education. With Milan I have no regrets. The defeats are very painful, but are part of the game. After 4 World Cups with the national team, I would have wanted to win something, I cannot deny that they were 15 very beautiful years, with a bit more of luck I might have managed to win what the Italian national team won when I stopped.

“On the rapport with the fans of the Curva I think that if I have to go to dinner with them to earn a banner, I ask myself what sense it has, if they do it without me going to dinner it means that I did well what I’m paid for. If a certain detachment is kept, certain actions that they do can be criticized, it’s a more direct rapport.

“With regards to Carlo Ancelotti, I think that in England he will have to adapt to a more physical football, he will need to learn English well. Leonardo is a bet and usually the president won these bets, bringing a charge of innovation and youth is not bad. It’s a courageous choice, but it’s not bad. The coach is important, he must manage the group and is there that the wins are prepared and is also important for the management of the dressing room during the year. There are coaches who give an unmistakable footprint to their squads.”

I struggled with the retirement of my heroes, one by one, as I grew older so did they, and my teams forged on without them, and as they left I can’t help but think a small bit of my fandom went with them. I no longer struggle through Knicks game, while the new look Yankees make me yearn for eye black and dirty pinstripes, and the Jets well…my struggles with the Jets need a shrink at best. But it was Paolo Maldini who week in and week out renewed my faith in sports and my love affair with AC Milan.

I don’t remember the exact day it started, but I always remember my father talking about Baresi, Donadoni and Tassotti, and even though those players were fantastic in their own right, it was a left back that spawned my love for Milan and everything Calcio. I remember the red and black stripes, the white shorts, and the number three. I remember seeing these awkward black sliding shorts that stuck out just a bit past those white shorts and wondered on Earth would he wear those. Then as an attacker pressed the Milan goal I saw the reason; he slid, but not a normal slide meant to dispossess and disrupt the attack, this was a slide meant to steal the ball, rob the attacker of the object he coveted, and to begin a counter that to this day I have never before seen again. As he leapt from the ground with the ball at his feet he marauded up the flank at times finding Albertini, Ancellotti, or Rijkaard in the middle, as seasons wore on he found Boban, Pirlo and Kaka. Other times he would continue forward finding Massaro, Weah, or even Sheva. But when he felt truly game and most dangerous he would rattle the opponents with a shot or hard cross that even if it didn’t find net or target made you believe and understand how special Paolo Maldini really was.

Yes, I wanted to play defense and yes I wanted to wear number three, and though I found myself at times in goal or striker, I always managed to wander to the left back spot to try and be my hero. While I lost my aforementioned heroes in my teens, it was Maldini who pressed on, while I lost touch with the teams of my youth, my love for Milan grew as the years tacked on to Maldini’s career. I watched as he lost the World Cup in 1994, Euro 2000, and the crushing blow of 02 that saw him leave the Azzurri. During that same span I watched as he won scudetto’s with Milan and lifted not one but two Champion’s League trophies while others claimed his career was finished. I struggled through Istanbul, even using his look of shock as my desktop background to inspire myself to press on as he did. Then in Athens as he hoisted old big ears for the last time I cried tears of joy knowing that Milan and Maldini had defied all odds yet again.

So here I sit typing, contemplating my fandom yet again as my final hero, my last bastion of my sporting youth bows out graciously and and all too quietly. Paolo, like Baresi before you, there is no silverware in your swan song, there is no celebration of a CL, a scudetto, or even a Coppa Italia, but please don’t let that take away from everything you have meant to this club, this game, this team, these fans, and to me. Come next season I will come to grips of an AC Milan post Paolo Maldini, a post modern Milan if you will, a post Maldini-Milan that even at this moment has yet to take shape or form in regards to replacing a Legend. It is true we will never replace Paolo, we never did replace Baresi, we only united around a second living legend, and yes at the moment we are left with Kaka, Pirlo, Rino, and Pato but there is no heir to the throne, no player to stand above all the madness that is modern Calcio. So I wait patiently, maybe for Paolo’s son? Maybe a new defender to carry the legacy? But until then I sit and reminiscent with all the larger than life memories and the taste of my youth that I was able to relieve each and every Sunday…

Grazie Paolo, for the titles, the trophies, the losses, the loyalty, the passion, but above all the ability to be a unbridled youthful fan of you and this team, I will always love the Red and Black, but never again as I did yesterday…

“Maldini, what superlatives & honours can you make up that havent already been attributed to him or pinned to his chest, Worlds best………., All time highest……..etc but none of these get across the magic that you witness when watching the man play

My memories of Maldini are of him in the World Cup (especially ‘94), the CL and Serie A when we were stomping the opposition, my fave memory(s) are always the slide tackle, you know the one, where a striker is running down the wing and Maldini comes from behind and robs them and they dont even know until another 3 or 4 feet that they no longer have the ball! Class! None of this smashing into a player BS, for me Maldini is for me in one word, FINESSE

Even when things look like they are getting hot on the field, players are jostling with each other, things are getting hot under the collar, Maldini can always be seen to calm a situation down just by his mere presence (Chiellini aside lol), you will always see him laughing and joking with his counterparts between any break in the play or when coming out of the tunnel, this is the sign of a great man who commands respect from opposition players and fans alike

If im honest, i had my doubts about him carrying on for one more season but with the displays he has put in im happy to publilcy admit that he has proved me wrong and greatful for the chance to finally go watch him play at the San Siro where i met up with fellow Milan Offsider Sam

We were both at the Juve match and even though it was my first time at the San Siro the event was completely overtaken by the fact that i was witnessing one of Maldinis final matches, i watched every run he made, every pass and looked on with a furrowed brow. In his own words the day he retires will be sad and im pretty sure i can safely say that around the world millions of fans will share in that sadness. For me also will be the memory of watching him having played in Milans best ever backline, NO, not with Nesta, Stam & Cafu but with Tassoti, Costacurta & Baresi and the reason for the lines of stress across the forehead was the worry that we will miss not only our Captain but the fact that we have no direct replacement for him

I will always cherish most the memories of the overlap of Baresi & Maldinis careers and truly doubt i will ever see the like again, losing Baresi was traumatic for me truth be told but the blow was lessened by the fact that we still had Maldini, no such luck this time round!

For me, we are about to lose not only one of the worlds best defenders or captains or team lynch pins but someone who is possibly our last link to a time when football WAS just about football and LOYALTY seemed to mean something

He transcends the commercialism that has now fully enveloped his sport, he even transcends his club and country like any true legend, sure we can and will find another defender but ask yourself, can you truly replace Maldini and everything he represents??

I honestly doubt it,

Forza Maldini and Grazie!

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.

As a young child I would sit on the couch early on weekend mornings to watch the Milan game with my dad. I was fixated on one person who was charging up and down the field preforming perfect sliding tackles. It’s like the guy has a timer that would go off telling him the exact moment to go in. He has the presence of a God on the field, that makes strikers quiver in their boots as they tried to get around him. That man is set to retire now after 23 years at the end of this season, and to this day he still can keep up with even the youngest of players. Back then I couldn’t fathom hearing Milan with out Maldini, but the time has come where we will have to say good-bye to our legend and Hero. Milan will never be the same without Paolo Maldini leading us into the glory of winning all the Scudettos and Champions League Trophies to come. Paolo Maldini is and always will be Milan. He will and always will be the only Il Capitano Rossonero. The armband will be passed on to someone else but no one will ever wear it like Maldini has. While we are loosing a great player we only have a few more years until the next generation of the Maldini dynasty will hopefully pick up where this one ended.

Thanks to SerieA.tv for the great compilation, and great tune…

There are only four weeks left in Il Capitano’s amazing career, if anyone has anything to share please send it along to acmilan@theoffside.com.