Goran Đorović

Goran Đorović arrived at Deportivo in 2001 carrying an unusual biography for a Riazor signing: four seasons and a hundred appearances for Celta de Vigo, the neighbour and rival, before crossing Galicia’s sharpest divide. Javier Irureta brought the Yugoslav international in as defensive cover for a squad competing on every front — La Liga, the Copa and the Champions League.

It never became the chapter either side hoped for. Injuries shadowed his three years at the club, limiting the centre-back to eleven appearances before a loan spell at Elche wound the Spanish period down. The frustration was real precisely because the pedigree was: this was a defender formed at Red Star Belgrade, capped 49 times by FR Yugoslavia, who had played every match of the 1998 World Cup and gone to Euro 2000.

His Deportivo years overlap with the peak of the Super Dépor era — the seasons of the Centenariazo — and his countryman Miroslav Djukić had shown a decade earlier how deeply a Serbian centre-back could write himself into this club’s story. Đorović’s version stayed unwritten, which is its own kind of football biography. He later moved into coaching, leading Serbia’s U21 side and serving on the senior national team’s staff.