A Tribute To Sinisa Mihajlovic, Serie A’s Greatest Free Kick Specialist

The trepidation could be seen on Sampdoria goalkeeper Fabrizio Ferron’s face, and the free kick hadn’t even been taken yet. This was because Ferron knew what was coming; it was inevitable, as sure as the sun rises and sets.

For Ferron was about 20 metres away from the world’s best set piece specialist, who was standing over a dead ball, ready to give Lazio the lead. Sinisa Mihajlovic, for once, didn’t hit the ball with his unrivalled combination of power and bend, but rather lifted the ball like a golf chip into the corner of Ferron’s goal.

He could do little to stop it. In fact, very few goalkeepers could stop a Mihajlovic free kick. That day, December 13 1998, Mihajlovic would punish Ferron two more times, scoring a ludicrous hat trick of free kicks inside a 23-minute spell that has rarely been replicated at the very highest level in the game’s history.

Others have scored more free kicks, but no one did it as regularly and against the greatest goalkeepers in the game like Mihajlovic did.

The Serb sadly died at the age of 53 on December 16, just three days after the 24^th anniversary of that Sampdoria hat trick, after a long battle with leukaemia. The tributes flooded in from many within the Italian game who played with Mihajlovic.

“I no longer have a brother,” wrote Roberto Mancini in La Gazzetta dello Sport. “A day I never wanted to experience.” Mancini was teammates with Mihajlovic at Sampdoria, then the pair of them joined Lazio in the same summer, and when Mancini became coach of Inter in 2004, he signed Mihajlovic to join him, first as a player and later as his assistant once his playing career wrapped up in 2006. The two had a strong bond, with arguably Mancini’s most famous goal – the back heel against Parma in 1999 – coming from a Mihajlovic corner. No doubt Mancini would’ve taken his death harder than most.

“Mister, you were a warrior,” posted Alessandro Nesta on his Instagram account. “You were an example for all and above all to me.” “Difficult to find the words,” wrote Christian Vieri,” R.I.P to a great warrior.”

Warrior has been the term best used to describe Mihajlovic in his latter years and his battle with leukaemia. He announced in July 2019 that he was suffering from the disease, but vowed to stay on as manager of Bologna while undergoing treatment. This won him universal applause from the Italian football community.

His assistant Miroslav Tanjga oversaw many of Bologna’s matches, following Mihajlovic’s instructions, and post games the squad would often visit their coach in hospital. Mihajlovic had been given the Bologna job on a permanent basis after an exceptional six months as caretaker boss, coming in midway through the 2018-19 season with the club looking at relegation. Their improvement in the second half of the season saw them end comfortably in mid-table.

His time as Bologna boss was the longest managerial stint of his career, but he was let go at the beginning of this season following a bad run of results. As a manager, Mihajlovic was an advocate for youth. He gave a debut to a 16-year-old Gigio Donnarumma at Milan; got the best out of Andrea Belotti at Torino and developed Aaron Hickey from an unknown into a player who was eventually sold to Brentford last summer for £18m ($21m).

But it’s as a player that Mihajlovic will be best remembered for, and that ferocious left foot that struck fear into the heart of every goalkeeper that stood in his way.

Mihajlovic’s ability at set pieces saw him sit atop the Serie A list for goals scored from free kicks for years. And it was a highly formidable list, with geniuses and magicians like Diego Maradona, Roberto Baggio, Alessandro Del Piero, Gianfranco Zola, Michel Platini, Francesco Totti and Beppe Signori all below him. It was only in the final few years of Andrea Pirlo’s career that Mihajlovic was toppled, and even then, Pirlo only equalled his record of 28, and the pair now share the honour that will likely never be beaten.

They were all better players than Mihajlovic, but few could match his intoxicating mix of power and bend on a free kick. “I played football for the free-kicks,” he once said. “I didn’t like football all that much, but the free-kicks were great. For me, a free-kick is football. If there hadn’t have been that, I might not have played.”

And Mihajlovic scored some breath taking ones. If one needs to kill a few minutes after gorging on some festive food, watch some of his greatest goals in Serie A (link here). It was fitting in a way that his final goal from a set piece came in a game in which he scored two of them, for Inter against Roma in 2005.

Yet there was also another side of Mihajlovic that the public didn’t see, and one that was a huge asset. When interviewing Sven-Goran Eriksson in 2021, he described Mihajlovic as a ‘mentality monster’, saying: “He had such a strong mentality, he thought he was the best at everything. He had the best left foot, right foot, best shot, was the fastest. Even when he wasn’t some of those things, he believed it, and that’s a good thing.”

Lazio had only won a single Coppa Italia since 1974 by the time Mihajlovic arrived in the summer of 1998, but he, together with players like Mancini and with Eriksson, began to change the culture of the club. “With him, having a free-kick was like a penalty,” said Eriksson. “When players used to get fouled near the box they would scream for a penalty, but Sinisa would say ‘what are you worried for? I’ll score’ and usually he did!”

Within two years, Lazio had won the Cup Winners’ Cup, the European Super Cup, Serie A, another Coppa Italia and the SuperCoppa Italiana. It was the greatest period in their history, and Mihajlovic was a key component.

Mihajlovic was also part of the now legendary Red Star Belgrade side that won the 1991 European Cup, the last side from Eastern Europe to do so (and likely the last to ever do it again). But it’s his six years at Lazio where he’ll be most associated. Olimpia, Lazio’s mascot eagle that is brought out before the start of every home game, was in attendance at Mihajlovic’s funeral in piazza La Repubblica in Rome, alongside fans and players from all of his former sides, including Red Star.

Mihajlovic won’t go down as the greatest defender in Serie A history, a warrior on the pitch as well as off it, but he’s undoubtedly the league’s greatest free kick specialist, with a left foot as beautifully volcanic as his personality.

Few could truly leather a ball with the precision of Mihajlovic, a man who simply loved free kicks.