Dejan Stanković (born 11 September 1978 in Belgrade, Serbia) is an association football player who currently plays for the Italian Serie A side Internazionale and the Serbian national team, which he captains. He is an attacking midfielder who can also play out wide on the wings or track back in a defensive midfield role. "Deki", as he is nicknamed, is best known for his effective, accurate passing, versatility and creativity as well as his ability to score goals from long distance.
The Yugoslavian team became Serbia and Montenegro by the time 2006 World Cup qualifying started, and Stanković started in all games and scored two goals, but missed the last qualifier through injury. At the 2006 FIFA World Cup, he was given the number 10 shirt and Savo Milošević captained the new Serbia and Montenegro team in their first World Cup, but they failed to progress to the knock-out rounds after losing all their group matches to Côte d'Ivoire, Argentina, and the Netherlands. After Milošević retired, the midfielder took over as captain of the re-formed Serbian national team, following the breakup of Serbia and Montenegro.
Stanković began playing football for FK Teleoptik, based in his neighbourhood of Zemun. When spotted by Red Star cadet squad coach Branko Radović, however, 14-year-old Dejan transferred to Red Star Belgrade's youth system.
At the FIFA Club World Cup in Abu Dhabi in mid December, Stanković played an excellent semifinal versus Seongnam, scoring the opening goal and turning in an all around midfield performance.However, despite this, Benítez decided to bench the midfielder for the final versus TP Mazembe, only bringing him on for Christian Chivu in the 54th minute. Soon Benítez got sacked despite winning the trophy, and couple of weeks later Stanković expressed his dismay at Spaniard's decision to leave him on the bench for the final.On the same occasion, despite publicly backing the beleguerd coach months earlier,Stanković stated that Benítez simply "didn't work" at Inter.He says that strong personalities crashed to each others,Internazionale players after winning Champions League and strong personality of Rafael Benitez so at the end as a result was departure of Rafa after 6 months at the bench.
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