Hey, fellow oldtimers, let's put our stories here!

Old timers…present yourselves…we've had alot of new people join, and we're getting to the point where no one but us knows the history of this site!!!

Forgive me this is a little long.....7 years long....

A long time ago in a galaxy not so far away….my friend Lin and I went to France in June 1998 to visit some friends who live in Metz. Yes, we were there during WC98, yes we ended up watching as much as we could on TV. The Italian team caught our eyes, and as it turns out it was b/c we’d watched A LOT of their qualifying games without even realizing what they were or why they were being played. I spotted 2 players I liked—Pagliuca and Maldini—and Lin spotted Del Piero. Luckily, when we got home I started surfing for info on Maldini and was led straight to AC Milan AND a fan site called Il Rossoneri, which happened to be run by a Dane named Jan Hvvid Hemmigsen.

In August 98 I joined the email list associated with the site. Unfortunately there were a few people on the email list who preferred to argue, fight, call other people idiots, the whole nine yards as they say. It wasn’t long before Jan and I were backing each other up on the list, you know, hey I agree, stop the fighting that’s not what we’re here for, etc. and then we started to email off the list. Eventually Jan told me he was going to take down Il Rossoneri b/c he was designing a new site and the new site would have a forum on it. I’d already been posting a s small forum on another Italian soccer site, so I had at least some idea of what he was talking about. He was working by himself, so we’d chat on ICQ almost daily and he’d ask my opinion on designs and stuff for the site. In January 1999, Milan Mania was launched and I think I was the second or maybe third person to become a member of the forums. In a few moths we’d grown enough that Jan asked if I’d become the moderator—imagine, the forum was small enough that ONE mod could run it, and Jan also decided that I should have all the same permissions on the forum that he had. If only I knew then what I know now…

Allow me to add that also in January of 1999, I received an email reply from someone at AC Milan—replying to one of my weekly good luck emails. Whatever I was doing, don’t stop, we haven’t lost a game yet. And so I met Angelo Destro who works in Milan’s management. I got him to try ICQ, and pretty soon he was raving about oh you are my first Internet friend! It was kind of cute b/c at the time besides being the ticketing agent (or whatever his title is/was) he was also in charge of technology for the team. I think finally after knowing Angelo for close to a year, I mentioned that Lin, her brother and I were thinking of going to Milan and we were hoping to see a game. That’s all it took—Angelo insisted we come over, he’d meet us at the place where the bus from the airport arrived in town and he’d drive us to our hotel. Turns out he had gone nuts planning surprises and treats for the 3 of us—we got a tour of Milan HQ at Via Turatti, including all the time we wanted to wander thru the trophy room, we got the royal treatment at Milanello which included a complete tour by the guy who runs the place (and it was so obvious he was so proud of the facility) and the chance to watch the end of practice and meet most of the team, AND a tour of San Siro literally from the field to the very roof of the place!

Time passed, MM grew and soon Jan was thinking of expanding a bit. Somehow he got into hosting other sites and along the way, Xtratime was created. Again, I gave what advice I could and Jan was constantly showing me designs and asking about color schemes and of course, what could he name it? Anyway, XT came online and grew and I became a mod there as well. And Jan was hosting I don’t know how many other sites; actually I knew nothing of the technical side of things, not even the cost of the server he was using, but now I know the cost was very high and that’s why he was trying to sell hosting to others.

It was in the spring of 2001 that Lin and I made our second trip to Milan and this time, Jan decided it was time for him to see Milan so, yes, we met, saw a game, went to a practice (including lunch in the guest dining room of Milanello), went to headquarters, everything. Shortly after that, Jan kind of vanished. OK, I shouldn’t say that—at first he’d be offline for 2 or 3 weeks, which kind of had me in a tough position. People had questions and problems, especially at XT, and I had no clue what to do about contacting Jan! Finally he told me he’d gone to Milan again and had met someone and was spending a lot of time flying to see her. Time and money, obviously! Eventually his absences would be 6 weeks and longer—he had moved to Germany to be with this woman he met. As time went on he asked me to take over in his position at XT, which was a period of hell I would prefer to not even talk about. I was already “in his position” here at MM and had been for quite a while, even tho he swore this was and always would be his first home and first concern.

Finally Jan’s long absences put MM (and XT) in serious danger—both domains needed to be renewed PLUS we found out from Jan that the situation with the server was critical b/c he was so far in debt, probably to the tune of about $15,000! MM’s domain was due to run out first so I ended up buying it. A small party of people that I worked with at XT decided that since Jan was completely gone and both sites had already suffered 2 “blackouts”—the first one lasting over a week, we were totally offline—that maybe we should prepare for what seemed the certainty that XT was going to come to an end. I don’t recall the exact details, I was so stressed over the attitude of people at XT that I wanted out of there anyway…so eventually the group of us broke away and formed finalfootball.com which was a safety net for the community at XT. (I hated how I was being treated but it was still ingrained in me that I had thousands of people who depended on that site)

Anyway, to make a long story short, I broke away from XT and we severed the ties between it and MM….and moved MM to the server that finalfootball is on. MM was safe, and that was my primary concern! Sadly as life goes on, the group of people I broke away with has dwindled to….gee I think Rezag and I are the only 2 left, which is why—BLATANT PLUG—we’re always looking for people to help fund MM on a regular basis. I don’t want to have to call it quits, but I can’t afford the server by myself and neither can Rezag. Nor should anyone go into debt over a server, I swore that would never happen after what happened to Jan!

Now if anyone remembers Jan…no, I have no clue where he is; no I haven’t heard from him in almost 2 years tho of course my email address has changed. The last time he posted anything here was when he was “giving input” when Rez and Andrew (one of the group members who split from XT) and I were having someone do some redesign work for us. I have no idea if he’s even still at XT, you’d have to go there and ask.

So there’s my seven year long tale! Old timers….let’s get all these kids up to speed!