page_title: Aleksandar Mitrović (footballer)
section_title: Senior
hierarchical_section_title: Aleksandar Mitrović (footballer) / International career / Senior
caption_attribution_description: English: Aleksandar Mitrović, David Guzmán
context_page_description: Aleksandar Mitrović is a Serbian professional footballer who plays as a striker for Premier League club Fulham and the Serbia national team.
  A youth product at Partizan, he turned professional after a loan at Teleoptik, and was a regular as they won the Serbian SuperLiga in his first season. At the age of 18, Mitrović was named among the top 10 talents under the age of 19 in Europe by a selection of UEFA reporters. He then joined Anderlecht for a club record €5 million, and scored 44 goals in 90 games across all competitions in a two-season spell. He won the Belgian Pro League in his first campaign at the club, and was the league's top scorer in his second. In 2015, he moved to Newcastle United for £13 million. In 2018, he was loaned to Fulham, and joined them permanently after helping them to promotion to the Premier League.
  Mitrović helped Serbia win the 2013 European Under-19 Championship, being voted the best player of the tournament. Since that year, he has also been a senior international player, earning over 50 caps and representing the nation at the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
context_section_description: Mitrović earned his first call up to the Serbian senior national team by coach Siniša Mihajlović for a 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifier against Belgium. He played 69 minutes on his debut on 7 June 2013 and earned a yellow card after stepping on Axel Witsel's foot, before being substituted for Marko Šćepović. On 6 September, Mitrović scored his first goal for the senior side in a 1–1 home draw against Croatia in another World Cup qualifier. Two years and a day later, he scored his next international goal, the consolation in a 2–1 friendly defeat to France at the Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux, Serbia's 100th match as an independent nation.
  In the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, Mitrović scored three goals in two matches to ensure Serbia were still in contention to qualify from their group. On 9 October 2016, he scored a brace in a 3–2 win against Austria, and on 12 November, he scored the equaliser against Wales in a 1–1 draw. He continued this scoring run in 2017, with goals against Georgia, Wales, and Moldova, putting him ahead of teammate Dušan Tadić as the group's top goalscorer.
  In May 2018, he was named in Serbia's preliminary squad for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, and on 1 June, made the final 23-man squad. Prior to the tournament, Mitrović scored a hat-trick in a 5–1 win over Bolivia. On 22 June, he scored the opening goal in an eventual 2–1 loss to Switzerland. He was also involved in a penalty claim when Swiss defenders Stephan Lichtsteiner and Fabian Schär dragged him to the ground in the box, but referee Felix Brych turned down the appeal. He played all three group stage matches.
  Later that year, on 11 October, he scored a brace in a 2–0 UEFA Nations League victory over neighbouring nation Montenegro in the first match between the two countries since their split in 2006. The following month against the same opposition, he spurned the chance to score another brace, but missed a penalty, by attempting a panenka kick (coincidentally in the same stadium that Antonín Panenka scored the winning penalty for Czechoslovakia in the UEFA Euro 1976 Final). From June to November 2019, he began a scoring run, with eleven goals in seven matches. The majority of these came during Serbia's qualifying group for UEFA Euro 2020, including braces both home and away against Lithuania and Luxembourg.
caption: Mitrović (right) playing for Serbia at the 2018 FIFA World Cup
exif: {"Image Tag 0x000B": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image DateTime": "2018:06:21 22:45:10", "Image ExifOffset": "2242", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4516", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "12331", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2018:06:21 22:41:04", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2018:06:21 22:41:04", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "91", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "91", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}