Franco Baresi, the Defender Who Made Defense an Art, Dies at 66
AC Milan and Italy legend spent his entire career at one club and redefined what it meant to play in the back
By Gus "Walk-Off" Fields
He never scored a hat-trick. Never won a Ballon d'Or. Franco Baresi didn't need to. He made stopping goals look like something worth applauding, and for two decades at AC Milan, that's exactly what people did.
AC Milan announced Friday that Baresi, the club's Italy-capped libero and one of the most decorated defenders the game has produced, has died at 66. The club did not detail a cause of death.
Baresi spent his entire senior career at San Siro, arriving in the Milan youth system as a boy and staying to captain the club through its most dominant modern stretch — three European Cups, six Serie A titles. He wore the armband with the kind of quiet authority that made teammates twice his size defer to him, and he did it as a libero, the free-roaming last line of defense that Italian football turned into its signature position.
With the national team, Baresi played in three World Cups and was on the Azzurri side that reached the 1994 final in the United States, playing through injury in a tournament that would prove his last with Italy.
What details are available so far come from the club's own statement; funeral arrangements and further tributes were not immediately available. Baresi's shirt, No. 6, has been retired by AC Milan since his final season.
Tributes were still arriving Friday from across Italian and European football, though full detail on the scope of that outpouring was not yet available at the time of writing.
— Compiled from reporting by BBC Sport.
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