Dejan Stankovic is a Serbian footballer who spent almost his entire career in Italy. He is already 38 years old, so he ended his career as a professional player three years ago. Dejan Stankovic played in the position of the central midfielder, but could also shift to the right flank or move forward to the position of playmaker.
Carier start
Dejan Stankovic was born on September 11, 1978 in Yugoslav Belgrade. From early childhood he played football in the amateur club Radnichki, but at the age of seven he entered the system of the professional club Teleoptic. In 1992, at the age of 14, Stankovych went through a show in the country's largest club at that time, “Crvena Zvezda” and moved there. Fortunately, the club was based in Belgrade, so Dejan did not have to move. It was in this club that he remained until his adulthood and in 1996 signed a professional contract. However, by that time Stankovych already had enough games for Crvena Zvezda. He made his debut for the club when he was only sixteen, and had already played seven games in the 94/95 season, scoring his first goal. The next season, the midfielder has already played 26 matches, and after signing a professional contract he became a key player in the team. Over the next two years, he played another 63 matches, scoring thirty goals. Naturally, such a huge talent did not remain outside the attention of the leading European clubs, and in 1998, 20-year-old Dejan Stankovic moved to the Italian Lazio for 15 million euros.
Careers in Italy
In Lazio, Dejan Stankovic, whose photographs have already appeared on the covers of many football magazines, immediately became a base player. Already in the first season, he spent 42 matches, scoring nine goals. It was here that the footballer won his first prestigious trophy. Of course, for “Red Star” he won the Yugoslav Championship once and raised the Yugoslav Cup three times over his head, but this cannot be said to be trophies of great importance. But the Italian Championship, won by Lazio in 2000, is one of the most prestigious national tournaments. In the same year, the club managed to win the Italian Cup. In total, “Lazio” Stankovich spent five and a half years, during which time he entered the field 208 times and scored 33 goals.
However, in January 2004, Dejan changed his club registration, moving to Inter Milan. Here he spent twice as much time and ended his sports career in 2013. With Inter, Stankovych was much more successful - he won five Italian championships in nine and a half years, won the Italian Cup four times, and in 2010 even won the Champions League. Moreover, until 2011, Stankovych was one of the key players of the team, and only in 2012, age began to affect, and he began to less often become the basis. In total, for Inter, Dejan Stankovich, whose biography, as you see, turned out to be very saturated, played 326 matches, scoring 42 goals.
Team appearances
Stankovic’s career in the national team was rather unusual - the fact is that his appearances came during the collapse of Yugoslavia. Therefore, in 1998 he made his debut for the national team of Yugoslavia, played 41 matches, after which in 2003 he began to play for the national team of Serbia and Montenegro, in which he had 21 more games on his account. And in 2006, he had already started playing for the Serbian national team, in which he spent the rest of his career playing 43 matches.