For me, it’s the opposite; I’m proud to be talked about as half of our partnership. I played with a lot of great players and he is definitely the best defender I ever played with.
I was aware of Rio a long time before I came to play alongside him. When I was growing up as a young footballer, first as a striker, then a winger, eventually I started playing a defender when I was 13 years old. In Serbia we watched a lot of Italian football, and at that time Parma had Fabio Cannavaro and Lilian Thuram, while AC Milan had Paolo Maldini who was obviously an icon for a lot of generations that came through after him.