Borivoje Bora Kostić, national team player and legend of Red Star, one of the best scorers in Yugoslav football of all time, died on Monday, January 10, 2011 at the age of 81 after a long and serious illness.
Born on June 14, 1930 in Obrenovac, he started his career in Obrenovac's Radnički, and joined Crvena zvezda in 1951 at the age of 20. He played 580 games for Zvezda and scored 539 goals. With the "red and whites", he won four championship titles (1956, 1957, 1959 and 1960) and three trophies in the national cup (1958, 1959 and 1964).
He scored goals with his left hand from a long distance to many famous goalkeepers in the world. In the match Red Star - Dinamo (Moscow) on July 2, 1959, which the "red and white" won 4:1, he also scored a goal to the famous Jashin from a free kick from 35 meters.
Red Star fans remember that Bora Kostić was the record holder for the number of matches played in eternal derbies with Partizan - as many as 23. The last time he faced the black and whites was on June 5, 1966, when Zvezda won 2:1. Then he scored both goals. It was recorded that in 1956, in the championship game against NK Zagreb (7:2), he scored as many as six goals for Crvena zvezda. For a short time he played for the Italian Vicenza and the American St. Louis.
In two seasons, he was the top scorer of the then First Federal League - 1958/59. with 25 and 1959/60. with 19 hits. With 158 goals, he is in third place (behind Santrač with 218 and Bajević with 164 goals) on the list of the best goal scorers in all championships of Yugoslavia.
He played 33 games for the national team of Yugoslavia. With the Yugoslav team, he won a gold medal at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, when Yugoslavia won the first and only gold medal so far. He was the captain of the Yugoslav national team at the final tournament of the European Cup of Nations in 1960 in Paris, where the Yugoslav national team took second place (in the final Yugoslavia: USSR 1:2). He played his farewell match on September 23, 1964 against the UEFA selection (2:7) in favor of the reconstruction of Skopje, destroyed by a catastrophic earthquake. After the end of active football playing, he devoted himself to coaching.
