Mitja Ilenič received an October call-up from the Slovenia U-21 squad, but the 20-year-old New York City FC defender skipped the youth national team's pair of UEFA U-21 European Championship qualifiers and instead remained in the United States.
According to a report from Planet Nogomet, Ilenič didn't travel for national-team duty in order to "arrange their status in club circles." He was one of three players originally called up by Slovenia U-21 coach Andrej Razdrh who didn't link up with the youth national team and were ultimately replaced on Slovenia's October roster.
Ilenič was summoned for qualifiers for the 2027 edition of the U-21 Euros against Israel on October 10, and then against Bosnia and Herzegovina on October 14, but he's instead been posting Instagram Story updates from here in New York, not over in Europe where his countrymen are playing.
Hudson River Blue reached out to NYCFC to see if more information was available as to why Ilenič remains in the United States during this international break, but we've not heard back as of the publication of this article.
What might Ilenič need to "arrange" about his club status that would keep him away from his youth national team? Things have been a bit bumpy for Mitja at NYCFC since he returned from a previous stint with the Slovenia U-21s, when he started all three matches they played at the 2025 U21 Euros tournament, all between June 12 and June 18.
In the most straightforward way to evaluate his club situation, Ilenič is getting less playing time under Head Coach Pascal Jansen when compared to his involvement in 2023 and 2024 when Nick Cushing was at the helm. The seemingly never-ending battle for minutes between Ilenič and Tayvon Gray has again shifted in Gray's favor since the middle of the summer.
Andrew Leigh
In the 18 matches New York City has played since Ilenič returned from this summer's U21 Euros, Ilenič only made it into Pascal Jansen's Starting XI three times. He made just 18 appearances in MLS matches, and only played in 36.3% of the team's MLS minutes this season, each career lows for Ilenič here in his third year at New York City.
The biggest tell that all might not be well in paradise as it relates to Ilenič goes back to an incident in mid-summer not long after Ilenič returned to the fold following the U-21 Euros.
Pascal Jansen didn't include Ilenič in his squad, as a starter or an available substitute, for the game away to Orlando City SC on July 16, despite Ilenič traveling with the team to Central Florida.
Following that match, Jansen explained Ilenič's absence by saying, "Mitja is a guy who has some things on his mind at the moment which keep him quite occupied. I just want to have guys on the roster that are fully committed to what we are trying to achieve at the moment, that's why he wasn't part of the roster today."
That's a pointed and somewhat prickly statement to make about one of your players – and it seemed, unofficially, to be related to a possible outgoing transfer sending Ilenič back to Europe.
Not long after Jansen dropped Ilenič for that Orlando game, the aforementioned Slovenian insiders at Planet Nogomet reported that clubs in Europe were trying to sign Ilenič, eventually claiming in a follow-up report that a whole slew of teams across the continent were trying to sign the right-sided defender, but NYCFC's alleged €4 million asking price was proving prohibitive to getting a deal done.
New York City paid a reported €1 million transfer fee in January 2023 to acquire Ilenič from NK Domžale in Slovenia. The Sporting Director who agreed to that fee and brought Mitja over from Europe, David Lee, just left NYCFC to join Sporting Kansas City.
Despite the downward trend in his minutes and the departure of an internal NYCFC decision maker who clearly valued him, Ilenič could still turn things around while in MLS.
In New York City's most recent match, Ilenič logged 32 minutes as a second-half substitute against Philadelphia Union, his longest appearance in almost exactly two months, since he went 60 minutes as a substitute replacing Tayvon Gray during the Leagues Cup-ending loss to Deportivo Toluca FC on August 5.
Mitja remains under contract through 2026 with an option to possibly extend his NYCFC deal through 2027, so there's no urgency on New York City's side to move him on. Despite the openly-admitted issues with Ilenič's dedication to the team earlier this summer, Pascal Jansen did still welcome him back into the fold, albeit mainly as a little-used substitute.
Clubs aren't usually in the business of blocking their players from accepting international call-ups, but given that Slovenia's U-21 coach agreed to this arrangement, it's fair to wonder if this is all part of Ilenič working to fully mend his situation in New York City – or if it's one final twist before the promising defender gets a permanent transfer back to Europe.
