News that Maccabi Haifa had agreed terms with Andrija Novakovich — a deal, as previously reported, still awaiting a medical — left supporters this week with an obvious follow-up question: who exactly is he? The answer runs from small-town Wisconsin through the Dutch second tier and five Italian dressing rooms, and, most intriguingly, straight into Haifa's own squad, where Kenny Saief has been waiting for a reunion eight years in the making.
The two Americans share one precise moment. On 27 March 2018, in Cary, North Carolina, the United States faced Paraguay in a friendly; Novakovich won the first of his three caps that night, while Saief — the Israeli-raised midfielder who had switched allegiance to the country of his birth — made his first start. According to the profile published by ONE, the pair roomed together during that camp, and the friendship they struck up is part of what smoothed the striker's path to the Carmel, where Saief has played since the start of 2024.
Novakovich's story begins in Muskego, Wisconsin, where he was born in September 1996 to Serbian parents. A prolific schoolboy forward — a 41-goal season earned him Gatorade's Wisconsin player-of-the-year award — he crossed the Atlantic as a teenager to join Reading's academy in 2014, an unusually bold route for an American striker of his generation.
The bet on England never quite paid off. Novakovich made only three Championship appearances for Reading, and it took two loans to the Netherlands to reveal what he could be: 19 league goals in 35 games at second-tier Telstar in 2017-18, then nine in the Eredivisie the following season on loan at Fortuna Sittard. Those numbers persuaded Frosinone to sign him permanently in 2019.
Serie B became his natural habitat. Across three seasons with Frosinone he scored 18 goals in 95 league matches, enough for Venezia to buy him in 2022. There the story turned: his league output collapsed to a single goal, and he spent the following two seasons out on loan, scoring six for Lecco in 2023-24 and three for Bari the year after.
Last summer he signed a two-year contract with Reggiana, and the season that followed contained his career in miniature. He finished with five league goals, collected a red card along the way, and headed in the only goal against Sampdoria on the final day in May — a winner rendered meaningless as results elsewhere sent Reggiana down to Serie C regardless. The Israeli profile reports that he arrives in Haifa as a free agent.
What kind of striker is he? At 1.93 metres, Novakovich is a classic reference point: a target man who occupies centre-backs, holds the ball up and brings runners into play. Guido Angelozzi, the sporting director who worked with him at Frosinone, is quoted in the Israeli piece praising his physical power and his contribution to collective play.
The criticism that has trailed him through Italy is just as consistent: modest conversion rates, limited pace, and a tendency to do his best work away from goal — one strand of the Italian press went as far as labelling him a 'defensive striker'. That reputation frames what Maccabi Haifa are actually buying. This is not a signing designed to carry the attack single-handedly; the profile itself suggests he will not walk straight into the starting eleven.
Rather, Haifa are adding a different kind of forward to their rotation: an aerial outlet for a long Israeli season, and a willing presser who makes the men around him better even on the nights he does not score.
There is also the simpler, human calculation. Novakovich turns 30 in September, and after a decade of moving — England, the Netherlands, five Italian clubs — Haifa represents both a fresh start and, plausibly, a last big one. Adaptation has been the recurring test of his career; this time, for the first time since that night in North Carolina, he will attempt it with a friend already inside the dressing room.
