For Djordje Mihailovic, fighting for a USMNT roster spot is part of growing up -

Seated in his black Mercedes-Benz, Djordje Mihailovic pulled out of the parking lot at SeatGeek Stadium after a training session with the Chicago Fire. The original plan was to turn right after exiting. That would lead him west to visit some of the childhood spots that brought Mihailovic to this point in his career, a starter for his hometown MLS team and a U.S. men’s national team prospect with goals of becoming a permanent fixture in Gregg Berhalter’s squad.

Instead, we turn left. We’re no longer driving toward Mihailovic’s boyhood home in Lemont, a suburb about 20 minutes away from the stadium in Bridgeview, Ill. Instead, we steer our cars east toward downtown Chicago.

Mihailovic does not mind looking back at what got him here—indeed, he would later reflect on his first January camp, his rookie season learning from Bastian Schweinsteiger and Dax McCarty and his ACL injury—but he is focused intensely in the opposite direction: forward.

For Mihailovic, who was called in to Gold Cup camp and will have a chance to make the roster for the tournament this summer, the part of the story he wants to tell is where he is now and where he plans to go next.

“When you’re 18, 19 (years old), you’re first starting out and you still want to be a kid,” Mihailovic says amidst the bustle of a donut shop a block off the famed Michigan Avenue, just around the corner from his new place. “But there are a lot of things I need to be responsible for … I moved out, I changed my diet, and it’s all a reflection of my view of where I’m at in my life and in the game. I want to be the best player I can be, and I have to do the little things to get there.”

A rapid ascent

Mihailovic was in the back of an Uber on the way to an appearance for the Fire when then email from U.S. Soccer pinged his phone. He was being called up to January camp for the U.S. men’s national team.

“Holy shit,” Mihailovic said out loud, prompting the Uber drive to turn around to check that he was okay. For a player who had always been on the fringes of youth national teams—a part of a few U-17, U-19 and U-20 camps but never getting a call to the bigger tournaments—the opportunity came out of nowhere.

On top of that, Mihailovic had only recently returned from a 10-month hiatus after tearing his anterior cruciate ligament during a playoff loss to the New York Red Bulls in October 2017. His next appearance was 10 months later, and he finished the 2018 season with one goal and four assists in 582 minutes. Mihailovic had jotted down a goal of reaching the senior national team when he started rehabilitation from his ACL injury, but once back on the field he had focused solely on helping the Fire. As a 19-year-old coming off a major injury, he figured getting an international chance would take time.

But Berhalter and USMNT general manager Earnie Stewart appreciated the subtleties of Mihailovic’s play: his ability to see the pass a few steps ahead and to put the right weight on it, to keep his game simple and to find the right spaces to put himself in dangerous spots. Berhalter plugged Mihailovic into one of his dual No. 10 roles at January camp, and the midfielder scored in his senior national team debut against Panama.

His stock has only risen from there; Mihailovic was a part of a camp for the under-23 Olympic team in March, and was named to Berhalter’s 40-man preliminary roster for this summer’s Gold Cup.

“Getting called to my first senior national team camp and seeing the belief that Gregg and Earnie had in me to put me in the starting lineup, it’s not something you talk about with them, but something you feel,” Mihailovic said. “You start to pick up the belief they have in you.”

The call-up was the most recent step in a career that accelerated quickly over the last three years.

Shortly after being hired by Chicago in 2016, coach Veljko Paunović saw Mihailovic in an academy training session and pulled the then-16-year-old midfielder into first-team training, where he would remain for the entire season. After the season, Paunović set Mihailovic up with a three-week training stint with Atletico Madrid’s second-team, and the Fire signed Mihailovic to a homegrown contract in January 2017.

Mihailovic played 17 games in his first professional campaign, starting seven and registering one goal and two assists in 732 minutes. Even during some up-and-down performances, Paunović continued to put Mihailovic on the field to let him learn on the job. He also inserted the midfielder right back into the starting lineup when Mihailovic returned from his torn ACL after nearly a year away.

“He was the project since the first day,” Paunović said. “We immediately recognized he had something that has the potential to play on the next level. We were willing just to work with him, and the response we got from him was great.”

Mihailovic has also benefited from two pretty good mentors on the Fire roster: German legend Bastian Schweinsteiger and former U.S. national team midfielder Dax McCarty, both of whom have actively taken Mihailovic under their wings. Both spend time doing video work with him, and McCarty requested Mihailovic as a roommate on the road so that he could tutor the teenager.

Schweinsteiger remembered his first impressions of a then-18-year-old Mihailovic.

“You can see he is a football player, he is technical, clear, he was not always passing the ball to the first option, but also the second option,” Schweinsteiger said. “He was moving more fluid and not so mechanical. He was also actually confident about himself, that he was better than one or the other. It’s a thing that was good to see, because he knows his strengths. But you also need to have patience as a young player and be willing to learn every day. … The most important thing for me is that he’s always ready to learn.”

Mihailovic joked that he is a bit of a “little brother” at times with Schweinsteiger, following him around the airport during travel days so they can sit next to each other and do film review.

“If I signed anywhere else I don’t think I would’ve got to where I am because of who I had to help me,” Mihailovic said.

Mihailovic recognized that others saw something in him in his first few years as a pro. He also realized that in order to maximize the potential others have tried to nurture, he needed to take on more as a professional.

After January camp, Mihailovic understood that maturing on the field wasn’t going to be enough in itself. He had to improve in his off-the-field approach, too.

(Photo by Mike DiNovo/USA TODAY Sports)

At 20, not so young anymore

Mihailovic got out of the shower earlier this month and looked around his empty apartment. It was his first night of his life living in his own place, away from home and a tight-knit Serbian family that had supported him through his whole career. Mihailovic’s father, Aleks, a midfielder for the Washington Diplomats of the old NASL, had attended nearly every training session and game during his son’s academy career. His parents traveled to every away game. His sister often attended games, too, and his grandmother, who lives with his parents, cooked him meals every day.

The 20-year-old midfielder had watched his father tear up as he carried boxes down the stairs of their home the day before his move. His grandmother cried, too. Mihailovic was only moving an hour or so away, but it felt much bigger than that. As he looked around the apartment, he too got emotional.

“It was hard,” Mihailovic said. “I’ll say it. I started crying. I was like, ‘Wow, this is weird.’ I was thinking of things we did as a family and they’re not in the same house as me now. I got emotional.”

Cutting the cord was necessary, though. Discussions with Fire general manager Nelson Rodriguez provided some motivation to become more independent and to grow off the field as he matured on it. The influence of Berhalter and the national team January camp played a role, as well.

With the U.S. national team, Mihailovic was on a strict diet aimed at providing more overall energy, especially late in games. The diet consisted of no carbs during the week, except for game day or the day before the game. Mihailovic liked the results, but found that it was a bit harder to maintain that discipline while living at home.

“After a week and a half, two weeks of following this diet, it’s crazy how much better you can feel as an athlete and your performance will increase,” Mihailovic said. “My family used to eat whatever they want, so it was really hard when I come back from January camp. Living with them there were cookies everywhere and Serbian desserts everywhere. Now I can buy what I want to buy and train myself and really go with this diet, and I’ve carried it on since.”

The diet is part of an effort to go from fringe U.S. national team player to regular, and from MLS starter to star.

Mihailovic is not the flashiest player. He is more of a connector, playing a linking role in between the back line and the forward lines. Paunović called him an “eight and a half or a 10 less half,” implying that Mihailovic is somewhere between that linking midfielder and a playmaker.

This season, the 20-year-old is averaging 1.5 key passes per game, tied for third-most by an American player in MLS, according to whoscored.com. Three of the four American players ranked on that leaderboard are age 20 or younger: FC Dallas midfielder Paxton Pomykal, 19; Philadelphia Union midfielder Brendan Aaronson, 20; and Mihailovic.

It’s a nice stat for a player in just his third professional season, but Paunović said his “young” player can no longer think of himself as young.

“In football you have to mature and grow up very quickly,” Paunović said. “Once you have the experience on the first-team level for a few years, the people don’t consider you younger any more. He’s in a different status.”

Paunović is looking to Mihailovic to become more consistent and to impact the game more often. Mihailovic can pull plenty of motivation just by looking at his competition on the Gold Cup roster. The Fire homegrown is fighting for a spot with the likes of Schalke’s Weston McKennie and Chelsea’s Christian Pulisic, as well as MLS standouts Darlington Nagbe and Cristian Roldan.

Mihailovic said his aim is to become more influential. As he sees it, he currently makes “three or four really good passes a game.” He’d like that number to be much higher, closer to 10 or 12. He pointed to Roldan, as an example of a player who has more of an impact over the full 90 minutes. He also said Berhalter told him he needed to come up with a plan to “solve anything” that is thrown at him on the field.

He will get another chance to compete for a national team spot this summer, and to convince a few more people he belongs on the field with the likes of McKennie and Pulisic.

“I want to be a national team regular,” he said. “I’m on the outside and have to work my way to get there. … That’s what drives me.”

Mihailovic knows that the growing process is still ongoing, but he is intent on keeping pace with his up-and-coming generation of American talent. And while his commute to work is a bit longer now from his downtown home, he feels closer to being the top professional he wants to be than he ever has before.

(Top photo by John Dorton/ISI)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kGloamlpaHxzfJByZmluX2WCcLLOq2Sdop%2BnsauxjKagoZmZoby3tcJmnaKfmKm2r7OMn6arZZFiwrS5za1kq6ejqbKzedKppq1lmah6sa3RrWSonl2cv7DDyKeeZq2gZA%3D%3D