Former Fire attacker Djordje Mihailovic has changed since he was with the U.S. men’s national team during the 2019 Gold Cup.
‘‘A lot has happened from that point and now,’’ Mihailovic, 24, said when he was in Chicago with the USMNT last month for the 2023 Gold Cup. ‘‘I was a little kid back then, and I feel like I’m an adult now. All of the experiences [since] then [have] made me a different type of player, a different type of human.’’
Indeed, Mihailovic — who grew up in Lemont — has gone through a lot in the last four years.
During the COVID-affected season of 2020, Mihailovic was benched and had a run-in with then-Fire coach Raphael Wicky in an MLS is Back Tournament elimination match and generally seemed to be stagnating with his hometown club. In December of that year, the Fire traded Mihailovic to CF Montreal for up to $1 million in allocation money.
Mihailovic then blossomed in Montreal, scoring 13 goals and adding 22 assists in two seasons before his move to Dutch side AZ Alkmaar in January 2023. During his first half-season in the Netherlands, he played in 15 league matches and contributed only one goal and one assist.
The transition to Europe, Mihailovic said, was not what he expected.
‘‘I thought that I was going to come in smoothly into the team and find my rhythm fairly quickly, but it has taken some time for me,’’ Mihailovic said. ‘‘It was expected from the coaches and from the club that it’s going to take time for me to adjust just to living there in a different country.
‘‘I think that was the bigger change than the sport itself, just to live there and [in] a different culture and to feel comfortable in that environment away from the field. But this is an opportunity right now that I have going into the new season. I have to get sharp in [the Gold Cup] and go into preseason with the team and make my mark into that team.”
Not always getting immediate results is something Mihailovic has had to handle before.
When he was with the Fire, Mihailovic blew out his ACL in the 2017 playoffs. Though his knee recovered, the technically gifted Mihailovic never really was given the keys to the Fire attack and likely was underused and deployed incorrectly by Wicky and predecessor Veljko Paunovic. He also hasn’t yet become a regular with the USMNT; as of Tuesday, he had only 10 appearances with the national team.
‘‘It’s all of those experiences that make you change your mentality and make you believe in yourself,’’ he said. ‘‘Even though when maybe certain things are not making you believe in yourself, you have to always believe in yourself. When you go through those experiences, you learn different ways of thinking.’’
On and off the field, Mihailovic isn’t the same person he was when he left Chicago and the Fire. Living in and learning new cultures, such as in Montreal and the Netherlands, will do that to somebody, and Mihailovic has learned about himself as he has hopped around the globe.
‘‘When you experience living away from home and also living in different countries, you just learn different things,’’ he said.
