LB: Paolo Maldini
It’s perhaps a very English way of thinking to see defending as the art of getting stuck in, delivering crunching tackles and stopping your opponent at all costs.
But for Italy and Milan icon Paolo Maldini, that would been seen as failure.
“If I have to make a tackle then I have already made a mistake,” he once said, which neatly sums up the defender’s playing style and personal philosophy. Maldini was always one move ahead of his opponent, with an almost supernatural ability to be in position to sniff out danger before it developed and then turn defence into attack with his superb passing range.
The list of strikers that failed to get the better of Maldini during his 25-year Serie A and European reign is a veritable who’s who of that era’s greatest players (Maradona, Zidane, both Ronaldos, Battistuta, Vieri, Baggio, Del Piero, and many, many more). We dare say if you ask any of them, they will tell you that the Milan skipper was the toughest defender they ever took on.
A true one-club man, Maldini turned out 902 times for Milan won 126 caps for Italy, usually as captain and won just about everything there was to win during his domestic career, including seven Serie A titles, five European Cups, while he captained his county to the finals of both the World Cup and the European Championship.
We’ll leave the final word to a player who spent two decades trying - and usually failing - to get the better of the classy defender, Alessandro Del Piero: “There are great players and there are world-class players.” the former Juventus striker. “Then there are those who manage to go beyond that term. Paolo is the perfect example.”
Joe Mewis
