This season could be the last for AC Milan captain Paolo Maldini. (Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images).

There are few players that ever managed to get the better of Italian defender Paolo Maldini.

But the AC Milan captain, now in his 23rd season with the Rossoneri, appears to have met his match in the one opponent that not even he can stop: pain.

Maldini, 38, earlier this week hinted that this season will likely be his last. Still suffering from a knee operation that sidelined him for most of the 2005-06 campaign, Maldini aggravated the injury in a game against city rivals Inter Milan on March 11, his 600th appearance in Serie A.

Maldini is questionable for AC Milan's quarter-final matchup in the Champions League against Bayern Munich next week, and to hear the Italian talk you get the sense that he's on his last legs - literally.

"The knee that I had operated last year is doing well, but the other is now more or less in the same situation as the one that underwent surgery," Maldini told reporters on Tuesday. "If things continue like this then it will be almost impossible to continue."

He never won a World Cup or was named FIFA World Player of the Year, but Maldini became perhaps the greatest fullback the game has ever known by elevating the pedestrian act of defending to an art form - while the Italian painted with oils, others were stuck using watercolours.

Ask any striker or attacking midfielder of any repute over the last 20 years and chances are they'll tell you the toughest defender they ever faced was Maldini.

A product of AC Milan's youth system, there was never any doubt he would play for the Rossoneri. His father, Cesare, was AC Milan's captain in the 1960s, leading them to a European championship, the club's first of six, in 1963.

The young Maldini made his pro debut during the 1984-85 season at the ripe old age of 16, and a year later he would become a regular starter for AC Milan and an icon to the fans who packed the club's San Siro stadium.

He would go on to play alongside Italian legends Franco Baresi, Allesandro Costacurta and Mauro Tassotti, helping to form an impenetrable defensive wall and the backbone of an AC Milan squad that was the most dominant and feared team in the world from 1988 to 1995.

Maldini won four European Cups and seven Italian league titles with the Rossoneri and went on to become the most capped player in Italian history with 126 appearances, 74 of those as captain, before retiring from the national team in 2002.

But statistics only tell half the story.

Maldini was the archetypal defender: strong, quick, composed, intelligent, and blessed with an amazing gift for reading the game like no other. Il Capitano - the Captain - was the textbook defender, held up as an example by coaches from around the world on how to play the position.

The words "Maldini" and "versatility" became interchangeable within the context of soccer. Although used mostly as a left-back by Milan and the Italian national team, Maldini was equally outstanding at right-back or in the centre of defence, able to adapt and adjust with the greatest of ease.

Maldini demonstrated levels of technical skill that were rarely seen in a defender before he came along, effortlessly taking tacklers on as he carried the ball up the field out from the back, instead of just hoofing it out of play in order for the defence to buy time and regroup.

An impassable bulwark as a defender, he was also a fantastic free spirit who was famous for his marauding runs down the wings, adding another dimension to his team's attack.

His precise tackling skills and timely interventions, anticipating his opponent's move before even they knew what they were going to do next, the efficient way he organized his defensive troops - nobody did it quite like Maldini. There was a mechanical precision to the way he played, while at the same time a beguiling grace and an understated elegance.

In most soccer-mad countries, young kids growing up fantasize about playing forward or following in the footsteps in Maradona. Italy is the exception to this rule: Maldini inspired an entire generation of young Italians wanting to play defence, a legacy that bore fruit last summer in Germany when captain Fabio Cannavaro, a defender, guided the Azzurri to their fourth World Cup title.

Maldini's greatest asset, however, was his longevity.

He did not, as the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas once famously wrote, "go gentle into that good night."

Instead, as he grew older and injuries began to take their toll, the Italian adopted a more static role in the centre of the defence, using his intelligence and guile to snuff out opposing forwards before they even had a chance to get sight of AC Milan's goal, let alone fire a shot on net.

The change in style paid dividends: in 2003, Maldini lifted the Champions League trophy after AC Milan defeated Juventus - exactly 30 years after papa Cesare led the Rossoneri to victory in the final at Wembley Stadium - and finished third in balloting for the Ballon d' Or award as the European player of the year.

Now, as he fights with the pain, Il Capitano appears set to walk away from the game, but the Maldini name will live on at AC Milan.

Paolo's 10-year-old son Christian plays with the club's youth team and some believe it's only a matter of time before the youngest Maldini inherits his father's famous No. 3 jersey when he makes his senior team debut.

And so the Maldini legend continues.