Medunjanin looks like leader in desperate times
CHESTER » The Philadelphia Union’s slide has sprouted a cottage industry of diagnosing the club’s myriad maladies.
For all the possible causes, Haris Medunjanin doesn’t appear to factor prominently among them.
The returns on the Union’s offseason transfer haul have been decidedly lackluster. And while it’s not translating into results, Medunjanin has been a consistent and influential presence in the center of the pitch.
The Bosnian international is third in MLS in key passes per match at 2.8, per WhoScored.com, trailing only perennial MVP candidates Sacha Kljestan and Diego Valeri. (Key passes are those that lead directly to a scoring chance.) Medunjanin is also eighth in the league at 67.8 passes per game, and he’s completing those passes at a respectable success rate of 84.8 percent.
So in the inquiry as to why that isn’t translating into goals, Medunjanin isn’t likely the problem.
“Haris plays a lot of forward passes,” manager Jim Curtin said Wednesday. “He’s smart about when he’s in possession, he wants to be the team that’s in control of the ball. He always preaches to the guys to be confident to pass out. I still think he’s played enough forward balls for guys to get on the end of, so I’m happy with him from that standpoint. He’s done a good job.”
The attacking chemistry around Medunjanin has been difficult to decipher. Derrick Jones performed admirably in the first five games, but he’s not a huge contributor to the attack. Medunjanin and Alejandro Bedoya seem a more natural pairing, playing for the first time together from the start last week.
That didn’t yield anything but another loss, but it at least provided hope moving forward.
“It still what I believe is a very strong pairing, in Ale and Haris, two guys that are great soccer players, really good on the ball and raise everyone’s level around them,” Curtin said. “We need to keep getting it more and more cohesive, more together, sharper.”
More pressing is the lack of production from wingers like Chris Pontius and Ilsinho. Pontius has struggled to recoup last year’s form, and Ilsinho’s spot in the lineup hasn’t corresponded with any sort of production. The Brazilian has nearly a season in MLS under his belt (29 games) with just two goals and two assists.
Curtin cites a couple of issues, including a lack of confidence to put opponents under pressure and induce chaos in attacking situations. Hampering that pursuit is the lack of confidence the team has shown in recent weeks and the dearth of aggressiveness, particularly against New York City when the Union generated turnovers but didn’t cash them in.
“We’ve talked a lot this week again about, obviously your first look should always be forward; that’s something we preach,” Curtin said. “But guys, because of maybe confidence, aren’t trusting that first instinct to play that forward pass. The only way you get to the goal in this league is when you turn teams over, having that first ball be one that connects and have it be one that connects forward. We’ve worked on that a great deal. We haven’t gotten a ton of times where we’ve gotten our wingers in behind. A lot of it is teams are keeping us in front of them right now.”
With the Union (0-4-2, 2 points) in last place in the Eastern Conference and the last remaining Eastern Conference team still in search of its first win, Saturday’s meeting with Montreal takes on an air of desperation. Medunjanin, though new to the squad, is among the more experienced players in the locker room, and Curtin has leaned heavily upon those veterans to keep the team together in difficult times.
“We need to stick with each other in these kinds of moments, especially when you are in a difficult time right now,” Medunjanin said. “We need everybody. We are not only 11 guys who step on the field; we are 18 guys and even 24, 25 guys who can turn this around. We have a good potential group, and we need to live now game-bygame.”