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!

that's one long story... and to think i actually read through it... tho i pretty much can't understand alot of things... anyway... i'm thankful to you for this forum... =)

and after all this, we wonder why Debs gets upset when we use this marvellous tool to just fight and call each other names?

wow!!! Debs, this is a great story, and says a lot about all the work that you, and Rezag, and others have done so we have the chance to be a small part of all this...

Yes, now you understand why certain things really totally tick me off! Glad you read it and glad you liked it!

I love Milan since USA 94'. Funny how our love for Milan grown from Italy's defeat eh? Was extremely devastated by the defeat by Ajax in 95'. Keep on supporting Milan even though the local TV shows zero Serie A. Managed to catch the game whenever Milan in CL. That's all really.

Then, I moved to UK. And thankfully, Channel 4 shows Serie A every Sunday afternoon. You can hear the squealing from Italy. Seriously. I was so happy about that. Continuing watching game while doing school work.

It was Sunday. The sun comes out, the summer is finally here. Milan has a game against I think... Bologna. Lazio and Milan is head to head for scudetto 99'. Milan beat Bologna I think. And Lazio can only tie the game. The anticipation for Lazio result is killing me. Then, it's finally over for Lazio and Milan is the scudetto champion. I was so excited. Really really happy for the result.

Went to the Net to look for Milan news. Because HELLOO!!!!! WE WON THE SCUDETTO!!!! Found the site, and I enjoyed the comments and the happiness all around. Registered because I want to share the moment. Was too shy to post. Really. I waited for like... two days before I got my nerve to start posting. And I didn't mucked up too much. Was pretty excited when someone quote me. OMG! He quote me. I think it was Kui. LOL.

Visited XT. Lonely place. Yes. I thought XT is a very lonely place compared to MM. I registered because I saw some familiar faces. Love playing hide and seek, cos I used different nick in XT. Enjoyed both sites, untill, I went home. No net, no Serie A, no nothing.

Then Milan decided to chuck Albertini away. It made me sad. He's my favourite player in Milan, heck, I decided to support Milan in the beginning because of him. So, I think I better stay away from anything Milan for a while. Keep in contact with Gabrielle. She's my updates. I did come to the forum sometimes, but I rarely post.

Was over the moon when Milan got the CL and Scudetto, though I did not share my emotions with you guys. Was extremely wanted to kill all these Liverpool for their very lucky win in CL. Ceh. Came back because it's the WC. And all those accusations against Milan. The last two weeks is such a bittersweet moment from me.

For me, Milan is still the best team in world. And MM is a huge part of it. I don't even go to the official site, I got everything from MM. MM is also the first internet forum I joined. And it serve the basic for comparison to other forums. It's great to see some old faces are still around. *wave* I'm sorry if I could not contribute much, I need to catch up with some of the old news. LOL.

I hope the site will still be around in the 20 years or so. Thank you Debs. Thank you Jan for starting it up. Thank you mods. Thank you to all whose contributed. You made me love Milan more than I thought I could possilby had. Thank you.

*thus, ct had finished its acceptance speech :p *

ct, that's a lovely story! I remember you saying in the past how you were in the UK but luckily did get games. Same way here--on Sundays when we can get a Milan game we're glued to the tube, yelling and screaming. The cat hates Sunday games days--too noisy! I'm sure the whole neighborhood heard us when Italy won the World Cup.

20 years from now? No, I think I'll sell it off before then....

....all the good memories....
Haha...CT you got Gabrielle as your 'updater',you know what she was my updater too till now when I kinda busy I will asked her for updates.

One of the best times I had in Milanmania was the time the chat (yes I mean the chat) was the most active.
We have a crazy time at that time, full of laughters and madness.
Posters that I can recalled like Bodat, Adnan, khris and REZAG

You won't believe the topic that we "discussed"

days gone by and I have been around for about 4 years now.
Debs, I feel like one of the dinosaurs now

Originally Posted by humanTORCH

One of the best times I had in Milanmania was the time the chat (yes I mean the chat) was the most active.
We have a crazy time at that time, full of laughters and madness.
Posters that I can recalled like Bodat, Adnan, khris and REZAG

You won't believe the topic that we "discussed"

days gone by and I have been around for about 4 years now.
Debs, I feel like one of the dinosaurs now

Maybe I don't want to know the topic you guys discussed!

I loved chat too, on game days! That was a total blast! Whoever was getting the game live on TV would do the reporting. It was like a ritual, we HAD to be in chat during games. Found out later that little feature, back then, was costing Jan like $100 a month! I'd like to find another solution for us and get that going again.

debs ... see my post in the 'looking for a few good people' thread

Just replied to it. Thing is to really make this work we need more than 1 or 2 people working on it. It's alot of work, so a committee of people with some skills might be nice....

Originally Posted by Debs

Maybe I don't want to know the topic you guys discussed!

I loved chat too, on game days! That was a total blast! Whoever was getting the game live on TV would do the reporting. It was like a ritual, we HAD to be in chat during games. Found out later that little feature, back then, was costing Jan like $100 a month! I'd like to find another solution for us and get that going again.

You can say that again
At one point of time some of us was deprived to watch some of the matces. So we have to rely on Bodat for the update. While we chat bodat will be the 'commentator' but guess what, all the updates he made aren't all true etc. the final score

Khris telling us all the story about Reza was hilarious.
Bt the way I did say Khris posting recently.......Hey Khris welcome back mate.

Well it was on 2001/02 season when Milan is looking forward to find Gaizka Mendieta signings after his remarkable performance with Valencia during the season. So that I search on the net about the related news and also I search on an e-mail account which has word "milan" as the address, and then I end up here on MilanMania, on the old days it has an email account milanfan.com , so that we can have an email address as: [email protected], and then I registered here with the username "echo" , the most gorgeous member from Indonesia

DEbs... the cat is still alive??? OMG! How many years already, the cat is still there? I think secretly your cat loves milan, because hello! It's owner is someone cool to support something cool. LOL.

20 years from now? No, I think I'll sell it off before then....

LOL. I want MM to be around when I get my first athritis! It is possible.

Hi All, I've been here for quite some time too. Don't do many posts, but I do alot of reading, so I'm always watching. I've been a Milanista since the 92-93 season, and have supported the Italian team so since USA 94, due to the amount of Milan players with them. Not sure what else to say, but I've been to the San Siro twice, first time to see the derby against that small team from the other side, then against Lecce 4 years ago. I've also seen Milan play in two pre-season tournaments in Amsterdam & Madrid. Was a couple of feet from all the players when they stayed at a hotel in Madird, but has decided not to bring my camera with me then. Damn. Anyway, will always be a MILANISTA no matter what. FORZA MILAN PER SEMPRE.

Originally Posted by Tony75

Hi All, I've been here for quite some time too. Don't do many posts, but I do alot of reading, so I'm always watching. I've been a Milanista since the 92-93 season, and have supported the Italian team so since USA 94, due to the amount of Milan players with them. Not sure what else to say, but I've been to the San Siro twice, first time to see the derby against that small team from the other side, then against Lecce 4 years ago. I've also seen Milan play in two pre-season tournaments in Amsterdam & Madrid. Was a couple of feet from all the players when they stayed at a hotel in Madird, but has decided not to bring my camera with me then. Damn. Anyway, will always be a MILANISTA no matter what. FORZA MILAN PER SEMPRE.

Holy smoly! We even got long lost brudders we never knew we had!

Shame on you Tony75! LOL! You should participate more.