7 reasons why Paolo Maldini is the greatest defender of all time

Paolo Maldini is a legend of the game

Defence wins championships, and the best defences win the most trophies in football as a general rule. Defence in modern football has evolved into an art form. The best defenders in the world today are the fittest in the history of the game, and play some of the most tactically astute and technically assured football ever seen.

The evolution of the modern defender has occurred due to the extraordinary abilities of footballers from the past. Franz Beckenbauer reinvented the role of the sweeping defender in the game to devastating effect, and ever since then, defenders have devoted more attention to honing their ball-playing skills. 

Paolo Maldini is probably the only defender who went one better than Der Kaiser in the way a defender could impact a football game. The Italian’s illustrious career saw him play for the majority of his career as a left-back, despite the fact that he was predominantly right-footed while kicking the ball.

Maldini, over the course of his career, faced all of the best players of his time – from Maradona in the ‘80s to this current Messi-Ronaldo period, which began at the fag end of his career. He earned victories over nearly all of them and is universally acknowledged as the greatest left-back of all time.

Here are 7 reasons why he should be considered as the greatest defender of all time:

#1 He was world-class right from his introduction

Maldini broke into Milan’s first team at the mind-bogglingly young age of 16. Within 2 years of his introduction to the Milan first team, Maldini was competing in European competitions and performing against the best footballers of the day.

He won his first Champions League trophy in the 1988-89 season, and then proceeded to defend the trophy alongside Franco Baresi, Mauro Tassotti and Costacurta with a 1-0 win over Benfica. By that time, he had also made his senior national team debut (at the age of 19), already having been blooded into Italy’s youth setup under his own father and Italian football legend Cesare.

These were the turning points of his career, as his elite defensive skills came into notice before he turned 23 years old – he is one of the few defenders to have won 2 Champions League trophies by that age.