Medunjanin answers call, but for club first

Always composed, with a ball at his feet or a microphone in his face, Haris Medunjanin gladly accepted the call from the Bosnia and Herzegovina national team last week for an upcoming World Cup qualifier with Greece.

But when coach Mehmed Bazdarevic told Medunjanin that he hoped to have in him camp by June 1, Medunjanin balked, in the forthright manner in which he’s accustomed to voicing his opinion.

“I told them I have a game against New York, it’s important for us here and I wanted to stay with the guys,” Medunjanin recounted Wednesday. “Hopefully we can win that game and go with a good feeling to the national team.”

The 32-year-old Medunjanin, who has 54 caps and eight goals for his country, crossed the Atlantic in the winter without expectations of whether he’d still be in Bazdarevic’s plans. But his confidence in the project he was buying into in Philadelphia offered him the poise to forge ahead. The veteran of the 2014 World Cup said that Bosnia had approached him in the March FIFA window, but Medunjanin thought it too soon into his Union tenure to be away from the group to which he was acclimating.

“I told (Bazdarevic) it’s a nice adventure for me,” Medunjanin said. “I wanted always to play in the United States and if you want me to be with the national team, you can call me. If not, no problem. I will not be angry or anything. I will just play my game here and if you want me, you want me.”

“He’s a guy that has really led our group through this good stretch of games, has been a guy that now not just because of the goals or the assists but also the little things off the field, he’s keeping the group together,” Union manager Jim Curtin said of Medunjanin. “He’s a big part of this team with the leadership that he shows, wanting to play for us.”

Halfway through the 10-game group stage of UEFA qualifying for the 2018 World Cup, Bosnia sits third in six-team Group H with 10 points, trailing Greece (11) and Belgium (13). The first-place team in the group automatically advances to Russia, while the top eight of the nine second-place teams are drawn into four two-leg playoffs for the remaining berths. The game June 9 in Zenica is therefore massive.

Medunjanin’s presence Saturday against New York City FC (1 p.m., 6ABC) prevents a central midfield crisis. International duty robs the Union of the services of Alejandro Bedoya (United States) and Derrick Jones (U.S. Under-20s), while Brian Carroll and Maurice Edu are on the shelf with injuries. Medunjanin’s presence allows Warren Creavalle to slot seamlessly into midfield; otherwise, a shift involving either Ken Tribbett or Jack Elliott stepping up from defense could’ve been in order.

Instead, Medunjanin will not only anchor the team at Yankee Stadium, his pairing with the defensive-minded Creavalle gives him license to get forward and affect the game on the postage-stamp pitch.

Medunjanin’s call to an upper-tier European side serves as the latest in the cyclical referenda on MLS’s international standing. Sebastian Giovinco made headlines last summer with his outstanding form in the league being nullified by the league’s low profile, in the eyes of then Italian coach Antonio Conte.

Medunjanin, whose passport includes stamps in top flights as far afield as Israel and Turkey, dismisses that assessment when it’s merely based on assumptions. He cites defender Laurent Ciman, a regular for both Montreal and Belgium, as a prime contradiction to the anti-MLS sentiment.

“I think MLS is a great league. It’s a very strong league,” Medunjanin said. “There are a lot of great international players. Ciman is playing for Belgium (which is) second or third in the world, and he’s playing there most of the time like first XI and he’s doing great. So it doesn’t matter. If you have quality, it doesn’t matter where you play.

“Of course, people will say if you plain in Spain, Italy, England, you have more better players and it’s much tougher, but I will say to everybody, if you come to MLS, no matter who you are, it’s still going to be difficult for you. It doesn’t matter if you are a superstar or not.”

“It’s happening right now. I think we’re in that phase,” Curtin said of MLS dispelling notions of second-tier status. “Are there still going to be naysayers and the Euro snobs that don’t respect it? Yeah, that’s part of it. … I think this league has improved in ways that I didn’t expect would happen in my lifetime with how quickly it’s gone on. When Haris talks about it to his teammates when he goes back to Bosnia, it spreads more and more, it’s really spreading quickly.”

*** Josh Yaro has been cleared to play, per his Instagram account several days ago and confirmed by Curtin Wednesday. Yaro has been out since shoulder surgery in February. Curtin is unsure whether the secondyear defender’s first minutes will occur with the Union or with Bethlehem Steel.

“He went through today’s exercise looked really good,” Curtin said. painfree,