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10 Most Famous people from Serbia

Serbia is a landlocked country in Southeastern Europe. To the west, it borders Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina while to the south, the neighbors are Kosovo and the Republic of North Macedonia. 

Bulgaria and Romania are its neighbors to the east, and lastly Hungary to the north.

What is unique about Serbia is that it has had various tennis professional players who have earned models making Serbia a world champion winner of tennis.

1. Novak Djokovic

A professional tennis player who is currently ranked World No. 2 and was formerly ranked World No. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals.

Serbia has been known worldwide because of the greatest tennis players of all time. Djokovic has won six Grand Slam singles titles and has held the No. 1 spot in the ATP rankings for a total of 101 weeks.

Djokovic is the first Serbian player, male or female, to rank No. 1 for more than 100 weeks and/or win multiple Grand Slams. He is the first Serbian male player to win the Australian Open, Wimbledon, and US Open.

By winning three Grand Slam titles in 2011, Djokovic became the sixth male player and the first male or female Serbian player in the Open Era to win three Grand Slams in a calendar year.

Of course, he is the first male player representing Serbia to win a Grand Slam singles title.

By reaching the 2012 French Open final, he became the ninth player in the Open Era to reach the final of all four Grand Slam singles tournaments and became only the fifth to do so consecutively.

Amongst other titles, he won the Tennis Masters Cup in 2008 and 2012 and was on the Serbian team which won the 2010 Davis Cup.

He also won the Bronze medal in men’s singles at the 2008 Summer Olympics. He has won 16 Masters 1000 series titles, breaking a single-season record with five titles in 2011. This places him fourth on the list of Masters 1000 winners since its inception in 1990.

2. Ana Ivanovic

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She is a Serbian tennis player ranked No. 1 in the world in 2008. As of August 12, 2013, she is no. 15 in the Women’s Tennis Association rankings for singles and unranked in doubles.

She beat Dinara Safina to win the 2008 French Open and was the runner-up in singles at the 2007 French Open and the 2008 Australian Open, has qualified for the annual WTA Tour Championships twice, and has won the year-end WTA Tournament of Champions twice, in 2010 and 2011.

Competing as a professional since 2003, she has won 11 WTA Tour singles titles, including one Grand Slam singles title. As of 2013, Ivanovic has career earnings of over 10.3 million US$. In June 2011, she was named one of the “30 Legends of Women’s Tennis.

3. Constantine the Great

Also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Constantine was the son of Flavius Valerius Constantius, a Roman army officer, and his consort Helena.

In 305, Constantius was raised to the rank of Augustus, senior western emperor, and Constantine was recalled west to campaign under his father in Britannia.

Acclaimed as emperor by the army after his father’s death in 306, Constantine emerged victorious in a series of civil wars against the emperors Maxentius and Licinius to become sole ruler of both west and east by 324.

As emperor, Constantine enacted many administrative, financial, social, and military reforms to strengthen the empire. The government was restructured and civil and military authority separated.

A new gold coin, the solidus, was introduced to combat inflation. It would become the standard for Byzantine and European currencies for more than a thousand years.

The first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan, which decreed religious tolerance throughout the empire.

He called the First Council of Nicaea in 325, at which the Nicene Creed was professed by Christians.

In military matters, the Roman army was reorganized to consist of mobile field units and garrison soldiers capable of countering internal threats and barbarian invasions.

Constantine pursued successful campaigns against the tribes on the Roman frontiers—the Franks, the Alamanni, the Goths, and the Sarmatians—even resettling territories abandoned by his predecessors during the turmoil of the previous century.

4. Monica Seles

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Monika Seleš is the former Yugoslav world no. 1 professional tennis player and a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame. She was born and raised in Novi Sad, SR Serbia, SFR Yugoslavia.

However, on April 30, 1993, she was the victim of an on-court attack, when a man stabbed her in the back with a 9-inch-long knife. Seles did not return to tennis for over two years.

5. Jelena Janković

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Another tennis champion from Serbia is Jelena Janković. He is a former World No. 1 in singles, in the months following her finals appearance at the 2008 US Open.

Janković’s career highlights include winning the 2007 Wimbledon Mixed Doubles title with Jamie Murray, the 2010 BNP Paribas Open, and the Internazionali BNL d’Italia twice, in 2007 and 2008.

The aforementioned appearance in the finals of the 2008 US Open. She is formerly coached by her brother Marko. As of 7 October 2013, Janković is ranked No. 8.

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Nemanja Vidić is a Serbian footballer who captains the English club Manchester United. He was part of the Serbian national team from 2002 to 2011.

After establishing himself at Red Star Belgrade during the early 2000s, Vidić moved to Spartak Moscow in the summer of 2004.

He further increased his reputation when he was part of the “Famous Four” Serbian national team defense that conceded just one goal during the 2006 FIFA World Cup qualification campaign.

He would later sign for Manchester United for around £7 million in January 2006 before establishing a prominent defensive partnership with Rio Ferdinand the following season and earning a reputation for defensive consistency and awareness.

He has three consecutive Premier League titles, the UEFA Champions League, and the FIFA World Club Cup. 

Other achievements include three League Cup medals, as well as being included in three consecutive PFA Team of the Year sides from 2007 to 2009.

10. Dejan Stanković

Dejan Stanković is a retired Serbian association football player. He captained the Serbian national football team until 2011 when he announced his retirement from international football.

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 distances.