Antonio Rukavina

Antonio Rukavina (Serbian Cyrillic: Антонио Рукавина; born January 26, 1984 in Belgrade, Serbia, Yugoslavia) is a Serbian football (soccer) player. Rukavina is currently playing for Borussia Dortmund as a defender (football). Rukavina joined FK Partizan in January 2007 after an impressive spell with FK Bežanija, and eventually became team captain. He is a prominent member of the Serbia national football team after being called up from the Serbia national under-21 football team. On the 5th of January 2008, Rukavina was transferred to German Bundesliga side Borussia Dortmund for a fee of €2.5m.

International

Due to his surname being common in Croatia, there were media speculations in December 2006 that leaders of Hrvatski nogometni savez (Croatian Football Federation) Vlatko Marković and Zorislav Srebrić would engage him to play for the Croatian national football team, but three days later, Rukavina in his statement removed all those speculations. Antonio himself denied this for Serbian newspaper Kurir, saying that he is Serbian, and intends to play only for the country of his birth.

Trivia

His nickname is Toni.