I Dislike Your Favorite Team

No matter what sport you are talking about, 1000 appearances is a rare thing. In the NFL, assuming that your team made it into the playoffs, just barely, every year of your career, and thus you played 20 games, you would have to play for 50 years. So that just doesn't happen. NBA basketball would require about eleven years without missing a game to hit 1000 games.

Paulo Maldini just hit 1000 appearances for AC Milan. Not only is he the indisputable best left back ever in the game, a very good case could be made for him to be the best Marking Back of all time. We've made that case before.

Paulo Maldini is 39 years old. He's almost 40! 40 years old!

He played his first game for AC Milan back in 1985. That's 21 years by my count. And he's been Paulo Maldini every single step of the way. I watched his 1000th game against Parma, and the game undeniably changed when he stepped on the pitch as a second half substitute. There was Maldini, making overlapping runs, and serving dangerous crosses into the box. By all rights, he should have had two assists in his 15 minutes of play.

That's what Maldini so great--he was the impossible man to defend; defenders hate having to keep track of defenders who overlap and serve balls into the box. He was also quite excellent with the ball at his feet. If you took Maldini, and took all of skills, and made him American, he would probably be the most celebrated American striker of all time. Or Center Mid. He's that fucking good. How he ended up being a left marking back is beyond me, frankly. But there's no doubt that when the Soccer Gods put together their Starting 11, Maldini will be holding down the left side.

You couple that with Maldini's righteous defensive abilities--he shut down entire sections of play on a soccer pitch. That doesn't happen in soccer, like it does in American Football. In soccer, you move the ball around, you probe for a weakness, you hope to catch a guy out of position. Attempting a pass against Maldini meant that you might be launching AC Milan's counter-attack. His slide tackles were works of genius. No one has ever slid and popped up with the ball at their feet more often than Paulo Maldini.

So we say, congratulations to Paulo Maldini, and his 1000th game for AC Milan, and for simply being, along with Beckenbauer, one of the two best defenders who ever played the game. We love you so much we're going to take you behind the Junior high and get you pregnant.