Aleksandar Kolarov

There is a moment from Kolarov's Lazio years that opposing players still bring up: a free kick struck from outside the box with such force that it caught the referee square on, knocked him to the ground, and sent players from both sides rushing over to check whether the man in the middle was seriously hurt. It wasn't the only official casualty of that shot — a rival forward had already gone down jumping to block an earlier Kolarov strike in the same fixture. He never described any secret behind the power. It was, he said plainly, just years of practice. Born in Belgrade in 1985, Kolarov came through Red Star Belgrade's academy before breaking through at Čukarički and OFK Beograd, then Lazio in 2007, where his combination of physical presence, defensive versatility and a genuinely fearsome left foot from dead-ball situations made him one of Serie A's most dangerous full-backs. Manchester City signed him in 2010, and across seven seasons he became a key figure in the club's transformation into a genuine Premier League power, winning two league titles and two League Cups while developing a reputation as one of the finest free-kick specialists in England, scoring memorable strikes against Real Madrid and converting a decisive penalty against Bayern Munich in the Champions League. In 2017 he returned to Serie A with Roma, scoring the winner on his debut against Atalanta and eventually holding, at one point, the record for the most direct free-kick goals across Europe's major leagues outside of Messi. He later moved crosstown to Roma's fiercest rival, Lazio's own capital derby opponent, closing his career with a final stint at Inter. For Serbia he won extensive caps, captained the national team, and was central to the country's qualification for the 2018 World Cup. His limitations were tied to physical wear as his career extended into its mid-to-late thirties, and to a game whose value depended heavily on set-piece situations and direct physical confrontation rather than the kind of technical subtlety that ages more gracefully; against faster, more mobile wide players in his final seasons, his recovery pace became a more exploitable weakness than it had been earlier in his career. Temperamentally he was direct, vocal and unapologetically confident, a leader who rallied teammates through visible energy rather than quiet example. He described his own competitive philosophy in terms that matched his playing style exactly — that winning, in football as in life, requires fighting until the very end — and he was consistently credited by teammates and observers with fostering genuine cohesion in dressing rooms through humor and approachability as much as through tactical seriousness. When he left Manchester City for Roma, joining a club whose fiercest rival was the team where he had made his name in Italy, he addressed the switch with blunt honesty rather than diplomatic hedging: he would not deny his past at Lazio, he said, but Roma had his full commitment now and Lazio were simply his rivals from that day forward — a directness that mirrored the same uncomplicated confidence he brought to a penalty spot or a free kick. He was trusted with his national team's captaincy, a role that fit a personality several observers compared to a natural challenger — assertive, fearless, and comfortable with confrontation rather than avoiding it. Physically imposing, vocally present, and entirely straightforward about switching institutional loyalties when his career required it, Kolarov built a long, decorated career on confidence that never seemed to require external validation.