Danko Lazovic is a footballer who has become one of the brightest players in the Serbian national team and St. Petersburg Zenit. He is technical, fast, fans and coaches mark him. For this reason, the attention of sports media is riveted to the football player. But what do we really know about him? What kind of person is Danko when he is outside the football field? How did he come to this sport? In this article, we will follow the career development of the Serbian striker and present his brief biography.
Childhood
Danko Lazovic (photo below) was born in the city of Kragujevac in 1983. Here the boy spent all his childhood. He began to engage in football on the advice of his parents. And there was a reason for it. After all, the then economy of Yugoslavia fell into decline. There was no work anywhere, so the bet on the prestigious institute and good education should not be made.
So Danko took up football professionally. And now we can say with confidence that he did it for good reason. In the nineties, football players from Yugoslavia were very quoted in Europe. Davor Shuker, Predrag Miyatovic became almost the main stars of the Old World teams. Therefore, the best education in a dying country was considered football. So many Yugoslav teenagers then linked their fate to this sport. Danko Lazovic was no exception. Before Zenit, the young man managed to change a significant number of teams.
Carier start
The first club of Lazovic was “Radnichki”, which were in his hometown of Kragujevac. There he performed for a whole year and established himself as a bright and active striker. To kick the young athlete did not go unnoticed. Soon, representatives of FC Teleoptic offered him a full-fledged contract. From that moment, the professional career of Lazovic began. In this club, Danko played only one season. But the athlete failed to realize his potential. The reason for this was teammates. For most of the match, the Teleoptica players were on the defensive. Therefore, one simply did not have to count on any success in the attack.
New club
Danko Lazovich could really express himself only after moving to FC Partizan. It was one of the most powerful clubs in Serbia. It is not surprising that the hero of this article immediately came to the fore and significantly increased the number of goals scored. As a result, in just a couple of years, the footballer became the team’s leading player and helped her win the Cup and Championship of Yugoslavia.
Career in Europe
Soon, Danko Lazovic, whose rating grew with each match held, received an invitation from the Dutch Feyenoord. The transfer amount was very impressive - $ 7 million. It is quite clear that, having paid such money, the management of Feyenoord had high hopes for Lazovich.
But at a certain point everything went downhill. Danko lost the fight for a place in the main team and for a very long period ended up on the bench. Athlete appeared on the field from case to case. 40 - this is the number of matches that Danko Lazovic played over three years. The athlete's statistics were disappointing. This led to the fact that the club management began to look for rental options for the player. So the young man got into Bayer Leverkusen. But even there, Lazovich’s game did not work out. Six months later, the footballer returned to Serbia.
The athlete spent the remaining six months of the season speaking for FC Partizan (Belgrade). Danko scored quite a lot, but for the fans he was not remembered for this reason. The media and fans were actively discussing his quarrel with Niche Savelich (teammate), which ended in a fight.
New contracts
After Danko Lazovic returned to the Dutch Championship, he was offered cooperation by a local mid-level team called Vitesse. In this team, the hero of this article spent his best season in his career. The footballer often pushed the team to action and scored a lot. It is noteworthy that for a long time the name of Lazovic appeared on the list of the main contenders for the Golden Boot prize, which is awarded to the best scorer of the championship.
The athlete was also invited to play for the national team. Lazovic successfully performed in its main squad until 2011. Then Danko sent a letter to the Football Association of Serbia, in which he announced a decision to stop cooperation. The player motivated this by his desire to focus on performances for his native club.
Soon, an effective Serbian striker noticed the scouts of the Dutch FC PSV. He was considered one of the best football clubs in the country. In 2007, Danko moved to Eindehoven. PSV paid 6.6 million euros for the scorer.
In the new team, Lazovic became the brightest player. But at some point, Danko lost his place in the main team. This was due to his conflict with Hub Stevens, the club’s main coach. Only after making an official apology to him did the hero of this article be able to return to the main staff.
Career in Russia
After Danko Lazovic won the Dutch championship with PSV, he received an offer from St. Petersburg FC Zenit. The contract was signed in 2010, and a Serbian player joined the club. For this team, Lazovic played more than fifty matches, scoring seventeen goals. The career of the scorer developed very well until the famous meeting with the Nizhny Novgorod Volga.
Electric Shock
A scandalous incident occurred immediately after the game. Lazovic ran to the fans to thank them for their support. Unexpectedly, an officer of the Russian riot police who was standing nearby struck the football player with a stun gun. After that, Danko quickly jumped from him. The lawyer of FC Zenit immediately wrote a statement to the prosecutor about the actions of a law enforcement officer at this meeting. But Andrei Shmonin (deputy chief of the Public Security Police of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate) said: "A riot police officer stood between the fans and the players with outstretched arms. In one of them he held a stun gun, but did not use it." After conducting a medical examination, it turned out that Lazovich still received an electric shock. The official diagnosis of a football player is “a burn of the 1st degree of the right subscapular region and electrical injury”.
For this reason, and also because of a tear of the thigh muscles, Danko left the main team of Zenit. Long downtime affected his athletic form. As a result, Lazovich was sent for a six-month lease to FC Rostov. There, the football player was actively receiving game practice. In mid-2013, the hero of this article returned to Zenit. But he could not play at the same level. Six months later, Danko became a free agent and returned to the Belgrade Partizan. And in 2015 he moved to Beijing Basi FC (Chinese League).
