Richard Williamsgets some insight into what makes AC Milan's Paolo Maldini so revered both on and off the pitch

At the back of the room there is a small commotion as a door opens. Il Capitano, someone says. And as Paolo Maldini walks in, the smiling master of all he surveys and the very embodiment of la bella figura, it is hard to avoid the conclusion he may be the only footballer active whose entrance can provoke the instinctive urge to rise to one's feet.

A month away from his 39th birthday, Maldini is the living symbol of a club he joined when he was 10 years old. Now Milan's leader on the pitch is looking forward to his eighth European Cup final, a run which began in 1989, when he was still a teenager. He woon four occasions and lost on three. "I don't intend to equalise the score in Athens," he says.

Over the last three weeks he has been undergoing treatment for a knee problem but after coming through two full-scale training sessions this week, he is confident that tonight he will be fit to make his 847th senior appearance in the red and black.

Maldini's links with the club stretch back into the past and forward into the future. His father, Cesare, was a Trieste-born defender who appeared in the club's first European Cup final, a 3-2 defeat by Real Madrid in 1958.

Paolo's debut came as a 16-year-old substitute away to Udinese in January 1985. The player he replaced at half-time was deputising in the centre of midfield for the injured Ray Wilkins, but by the start of the following season the teenager had become the first-choice left-back.

"You could have stuck him in any position," Wilkins said this week. "As soon as I saw him I thought, my God, this boy's got everything. He was 16 years old, 6ft 1in tall, quick and strong, with two good feet. And he was in love with football, which you can still see today. He's also stayed the same, thoroughly decent bloke, a gentleman as well as an outstanding player."

Kaka, Milan's current star, has a younger man's perspective. "When I arrived in Milan," he told me, "I realised very quickly that he was exactly the player I'd watched on television, so I wanted to learn his secrets. I found that his strong motivation is simply due to his character. You have to be born that way. He's a great man."

As Maldini's press conference began, the captain was asked if, after all this time, his blood runs red and black. "I suppose so," he said, "since my story here begins with my father, and I was born here. I don't know what I would have done without Milan. Maybe I wouldn't even have liked football."

Now that the elder of his sons, 10-year-old Christian, is playing for the club's junior team, the Maldini dynasty seems destined to continue.

For Paolo, however, there will be just one more season, shortly to be confirmed in a new contract. "It only needs a signature," he said, adding that he will have an operation to sort out the problem with his knee at the end of the season.

Maldini's continued importance to the team is a reflection of the work done by Milan's army of kinesiologists, chiropractors, nutritionists and physiotherapists in prolonging the active life of their best players.

"Milan continue to win," he said, "because the club has a different approach to the game - and to life, too, I'd say. It's the only club that keeps players after the age of 35 - not just out of affection but because of what they can do on the pitch. Maybe in a physical sense I was a better player at 25 than I am now, but at 38 I have a great deal more experience."

When he finally retires, Maldini will not follow his former team-mates Carlo Ancelotti, Mauro Tassotti, Franco Baresi and Alessandro Costacurta into the club's coaching hierarchy. "I have other things I want to do in my life," he said.

There is a Paolo Maldini football school for children in Senegal, a line of clothing run in partnership with his friend Christian Vieri, and a modelling contract with the H&M fashion chain.

Not even the thought of guiding his son's career can interest him in the idea of emulating the later career of his father, who coached Italy's under-21s for 10 years before taking the senior Azzurri, including Paolo, to the 1998 World Cup.

"Christian isn't 11 yet, so he's only playing the game for fun," he said on the eve of yet another historic night in his record-breaking career. "I won't push him. But if it turns out that he wants to be a professional footballer, I can only hope that he has the same kind of life that I've had."