Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Big win comes fair and square
In the 74th minute of a tense battle Saturday night, referee Sorin Stoica asked Haris Medunjanin a simple question, and the Philadelphia Union midfielder felt obligated to tell the truth.
Medunjanin had just tangled with D.C. United’s Luciano Acosta, trying to shepherd a ball out of play with the Union nursing a 1-0 lead. Medunjanin went to ground, Acosta behind him, finishing a step that Stoica, from 30 yards away, adjudged to have been a kick to the ribs. He rushed over and brandished a straight red card, shooting and asking questions later.
But when the query landed, Medunjanin opted against deceit.
“I was protecting the ball and suddenly he pushed me in my back,” Medunjanin said. “I feel that and then I saw the red card and spoke with Acosta and he was saying that he didn’t kick me. I said I didn’t feel it also. I went to the referee and he said, ‘Did he kick you?’ and I said, ‘No he didn’t kick me, I think it was just a push.’ That’s why it was no red card for me.”
Stoica confirmed as much afterward, that Medunjanin’s testimony swayed him toward a stay for Acosta. Whether or not that karmically factored into the Union holding on for a 1-0 victory, supplied by Fafa Picault’s 31st-minute tally … well that’s up for interpretation.
On a bizarre night that left grizzled veterans Ben Olsen and Jim Curtin frozen in quizzical shrugs, a little twist of fate doesn’t sound far-fetched.
“I have to give a lot of credit to Haris,” Curtin said. “You talk about fair play in this league and all over the world, he’s the one who had the intestinal fortitude and guts to speak up and say, there was no contact. He’s a man. He’s a person that I respect a great deal. It’s an incredible act. … I don’t know if I would’ve done it, but at the same time, he did what is right for the game, so I do commend him and give him credit.”
“He pulls a red and Medunjanin I think lobbied that he put it back,” Olsen said. “And I’ve got a lot of respect for that. I think he’s a classy player and a classy human being.”
Justice, Curtin would have you believe, was meted out earlier when the Union surrendered a penalty kick that the locker room swore up and down wasn’t one. A ball played in by Taylor Kemp and deflected by Ray Gaddis did strike high on the trailing arm of Oguchi Onyewu as the defender shuffled across the box.
Instead of a verbal argument, Andre Blake provided the decider in deed with his gloves, guessing correctly to his right and denying Lamar Neagle’s telegraphed, sidefooted effort.
“I decided I was going to go to my right,” Blake said. “I saw a few cues from him and I made up my mind. I went there and I made the save.”
Less morally ambiguous was Blake’s stymying of Neagle on a wide open header after a defensive breakdown deep in stoppage time. But the hapless Neagle, who is scoreless in 11 career games against the Union, saw his powered header nudged off the bar and out.
The win snaps a threegame losing streak for the Union (5-8-4, 19 points), who crawl out of the Eastern Conference basement, leaping over D.C. United (59-3, 18 points).
The goal was the case of a plan gone awry that paid off anyway. Ray Gaddis nearly lost the ball out of bounds before desperately swiping it forward to keep it in play. That action caught out Kemp, playing Alejandro Bedoya into space.
Bedoya wasn’t exactly aiming for Picault or CJ Sapong, who was dragging a defender inside the six-yard box. (“Come on. Of course I was aiming at Fafa,” Bedoya said through laughter afterward.) But when the ball found Picault by his lonesome, the forward buried a volley with aplomb, driving the shot through Bill Hamid for his fourth goal of the season, all in the last seven games.
“In those cases, you just track it,” Picault said. “… It ended up falling onto my left foot. I think either of us would’ve put it in, but it came to me and I had to put a strong one on to put it on target and give it a chance to go in.”
It was Bedoya’s second assist this season and second with the Union in his 24th appearance. Gaddis was credited with an assist, had it stripped, then reinstated for the sixth helper of his career. That should’ve been a harbinger for the night’s oddity.
The goal was the extent of the action in a languorous first half that produced two shots on target. Listless D.C.’s effort came via Ian Harkes in the 28th minute, a low shot Blake parried aside. Hamid provided a tremendous stop in the 73rd when Sapong lashed a turning drive ticketed for the top corner.
For a team mired in a slump, a little fortune, even the unusual variety doled out Saturday, was earned by a couple of big moments from big players.
“You need your best players at times to really step up in games, and I thought Andre Blake did that tonight,” Curtin said. “… You’d hate to see such hard work from our guys and they work hard every game, for it to slip up at the end like that would’ve been pretty devastating. But big from Andre to make that save and bail us out.
“If you talk about a night where guys were willing to roll up their sleeves and fight, I think that was evident tonight.”