It is six years now since Paolo Maldini hung up his boots and AC Milan retired his legendary No3 shirt into the rich annals of the club’s history. As one of game’s greatest players, never mind defenders, the sheer scope of his success and career for the Rossoneri and Italian national side is exhaustive.
In terms of silverware: five Champions League titles – the first in 1989, the last in 2007 – from eight finals played, seven Scudettos across 16 years, plus the Coppa Italia and Club World Cup.
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Maldini managed to match quantity with quality as he was a starter for Milan from age 16 through to retirement at 41, holding the club record for most appearances – 902; playing for one of the world’s biggest clubs at the very top level of the game across four decades.
In the modern era, only Ryan Giggs and Javier Zanetti can really compete. But then they didn’t enjoy the sort of international career Maldini did nor perhaps impact the game stylistically in the same way. He captained the Azzurri 74 times and played in three World Cups and four European Championships, finishing a runner-up in both.
Maldini was also the template for the modern defender. Not blessed with extreme pace or powerfully physical, his brilliance was his reading of the game, athleticism and ability on the ball.
Alongside Franco Baresi, Alessandro Costacurta and Mauro Tassotti, he formed the finest defensive unit in the history of football. All four great thinkers and innovators of the game and it’s curious none have gone on to manage, especially when so many of their Milan team-mates – Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard, Carlo Ancelotti, Roberto Donadoni, Clarence Seedorf and Marco Simeone – have done, to varying degrees of success.
Costacurta had an unsuccessful stint with Serie B side Mantova while Tassotti was an assistant under Carlo Ancelotti and Massimiliano Allegri at the San Siro, but both are now off the coaching map. For Maldini, it has never been a consideration.
Years spent following father Cesare – who played for and managed five clubs and the national team during Maldini’s childhood – combined with his own 25-year career, means now is the time for new priorities: tennis, boxing and family.
“My decision was to not do it. I don’t like the idea of being a coach,” Maldini told Sport360 at the Champions League Experience, to celebrate the first anniversary of Yas Mall.
“My father was a coach so there was a lot of moving around, not having a base. It’s a matter of wanting to stay a little bit away from football. I don’t want to coach, it’s just not my future. I started playing when I was 10 for Milan and I quit when I was 41, so it’s a long, long career.”
Chelsea came calling within weeks of his retirement, offering a role as assistant to Ancelotti, but Maldini never really gave it serious thought.
Unsurprisingly his phone never stops ringing with offers, especially as he reveals from clubs in the Gulf, but each conversation ends with a polite, “thanks, but no thanks.”
Along with his new sporting pastimes, Maldini also has various business interests including recently becoming a co-owner of the newly-formed NASL franchise Miami FC.
Now 47, there are flecks of grey in his hair and a long-standing knee injury means he’ll never play football properly again. But it’s clear from his warmth in which he speaks, that time with family away from the game, after such a nomadic existence, brings him as much joy as his storied career.
“I have other interests and business outside of football so I just want to have my own schedule and see what real life is,” he adds. “I can enjoy my family because I had been away for so long. I play tennis now. I love it. I did boxing for three years and that was very nice. It’s a hard but great, great sport. I really love the training aspect of it.”
Sons Christian, 19, a defender and Daniel, 14, a striker, ensure he maintains a link within football and especially Milan, as both are currently in the club’s Primavera squad (and will inherit the No3 shirt should they play for the first team).
Understandably the Rossoneri’s decline since his retirement, from Serie A champions in 2011 to last season’s 10th place, is concerning. “They are struggling… it’s going to take time. Maybe the project isn’t 100-per-cent clear,” is his assessment, with a grimace.
All is, of course, a far cry from the golden era of the late 1980s and early 1990s when driven by Silvio Berlusconi’s investment and the tactical acumen of managers Arrigo Sacchi and Fabio Capello, Milan won five of nine scudettos between 1988 and 1996 in the most competitive and richest league in the world.
As players came and went, Maldini was a permanent fixture, witnessing the rest of Italy catch up with Juventus, briefly Lazio and then Internazionale becoming the new forces in Serie A. But despite the trophies, at least domestically, drying up – Maldini won one more title in 2004 but added the Champions League in 2003 and 2007 – that period under his great friend Ancelotti he remembers the fondest.
“I was lucky because I had great teammates, a president who invested a lot in the team to be the best in the world. Everybody was working for trophies,” he says.
“I’ve been very fortunate to work under so many managers, because I had Mr (Nils) Liedholm who explained to me football is just a game to enjoy. Sacchi then took me onto a different level as did Capello and then Ancelotti, who had been a team-mate of mine.
“It was perfect with Ancelotti. We think the same way about football. He’s a great guy.
“Our relationship never changed from being team-mates to him being a manager.
“The last seven years with him were probably the best of my career. We enjoyed everything about our life, not only the games and the victories but the day-to-day of working together. It was a great time.”
Of the current crop at the San Siro, the progress of goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma has caught Maldini’s eye. The keeper was 16 years and eight months old when Sinisa Mihajlovic gave him his debut this season against Sassuolo in October; Maldini, who is quick to point out with a smile, “I was a little younger than him”, was 16 years and seven months when he first wore the red and black.
“I knew a lot about him before he made his debut because of my two boys and for the last year everyone has been talking about him,” he adds. “He’s very, very talented. It’s crazy. Goalkeeper is different role, it’s very complicated. He’s doing great things.”
Donnarumma, indeed, looks the real deal, but it’s further testament to Maldini that the young keeper is unlikely, like most players of this generation and beyond, to enjoy the same permanence as Maldini did. The nature of football in 2015 does not breed the same loyalty or identity as he personified.
In looking back at what he achieved, it’s not a specific trophy – for example the club’s first European Cup triumph against Steaua Bucurest in 1989, or the 4-0 victory over Barcelona’s Dream Team in 1994 with Maldini marshalling a defence missing the suspended Baresi and Costacurta – that brings him the most pride. It’s his staying power in a game that evolves and develops at such a rate, 25 years at the top level seems more than a lifetime.
“The good thing about my career was I won five Champions League and played eight finals in 20 years. We didn’t concentrate everything in five years and with just one team,” he says.
“I started, had a great team after two years and then my last team was great. The longeivity at the top level, that was what was best for me.”
