Aleksandar Dragović

Aleksandar Dragović was born in Vienna to Serbian parents and came through the youth teams at Austria Wien, reaching the first team in 2009 and winning the Austrian Cup with the club that year. He is well known as a tough-tackling centre-back, a defender whose game is built on getting stuck in. As of 2026 he is back at Austria Wien, where it all started. He moved to FC Basel in February 2011 and was an instant regular, starting every league game for the rest of that season as Basel won the title. Two more championships followed, plus the Swiss Cup in 2012, the year he was named best defender at the Swiss Golden Player Awards. He was in the side that beat Manchester United in December 2011 to make Basel the first Swiss club to reach the Champions League knockout rounds. In the 2012–13 Europa League he scored against Tottenham in the quarter-finals and missed only the semi-final return against Chelsea, through suspension. One match in Geneva in March 2013 shows both sides of him. Against Servette he finished off a cut-back from close range, then rose to head in a corner from captain Alex Frei for the winner. When he raised his arm to celebrate, the referee read it as an insult aimed at the home supporters and showed him a second yellow card, so he was sent off. In July 2013 he joined Dynamo Kyiv, and in May 2015 he helped beat Dnipro 1–0 to clinch the club's first Ukrainian league title in six years, with another following a season later. His Champions League night at Stamford Bridge in November 2015 was a strange one: he put through his own net in the first half and then scored at the right end late on, though Dynamo still lost. A five-year deal with Bayer Leverkusen followed in 2016, and a year later he spent a season on loan at Leicester City. In 2021 he signed for Red Star Belgrade, his favourite club, and won the Serbian league and cup in each of his three seasons there. For Austria he made his debut against Serbia in 2009 and reached his 100th cap against Scotland in March 2022. Euro 2016 went badly for him personally, with a red card in the opening game against Hungary and a missed penalty in the decisive defeat to Iceland. When you weigh him up, start with what his career shows clearly: a hard-tackling defender who was a near-permanent starter at Basel, one who could score from a corner, and a long run of trophies across four countries. The red cards and that own goal in London are the counterweight. His record says less about his pace or his range of passing, so judge those from what you have seen of him yourself.