There is this moment, just before the goal, when Haris Medunjanin could have behaved in another way. He could have made a slight adjustment, a minor change in how he interpreted the other team’s shape, and then the outcome would have been much different.
This description fits two disparate scenarios. For many, it evokes the first goal Toronto FC scored in Philadelphia Union’s season opener: Michael Bradley slamming home the first goal of 2019 with Medunjanin too far off to stop him.
But this same set of words can be overlaid on Medunjanin’s role in David Accam’s gamewinner against Columbus Crew. On that play, the Bosnian collected the ball from Ale Bedoya, strode forward, and hesitated for an extra moment before releasing a pass through the lines to Fafa Picault. In that moment, Medunjanin froze the defender shadowing Picault, allowing the ensuing pass to be played extremely close to the defender’s feet with a lower risk of interception. Additionally, David Accam took that moment to begin his sprint forward. This caused Crew center back Jonathan Mensah to pause, then backpedal. Mensah would have stepped to Picault if the pass had been released just a half-second quicker.
The blame for that Bradley goal has been placed firmly on Medunjanin’s shoulders by many commentators. But credit for the Accam goal has been strangely elusive.
Haris Medunjanin, if we are being honest, cares little for these conversations that seek to assign responsibility to individuals. In his mind, people who want to single out players should, perhaps, become tennis fans instead.
“In football, you can't blame anyone,” he says when asked about defending. “It's a team sport.
“You make a bad pass? OK, it's you -- no problem. [But] If the strikers don't press well, the center back goes out easy, then as a midfielder you need to open space for somebody else. Then somebody plays a ball and they say, 'Oh you should be there.' Yeah, but it started from the forwards. If they don't do the job good, then the midfielders cannot do the job good, and the defenders can't do the job good.”
Medunjanin’s response points to the difficulty of speaking about and understanding soccer as a team game. There is a way to take his words as finger-pointing at the strikers ahead of him; if only they were positioned more appropriately, he wouldn’t be caught out.
But that misses the point entirely: To see a soccer team as individuals is the real error that matters, especially to the players themselves. So each player must work as hard as possible to make sure every teammate understands where everybody else is and why at all times.
The key to this is communication. In fact, recent psychology research has even posited that team cognition — the extent to which one teammate is able to understand the world in the same way as another — is, essentially, how they communicate.
“You should always be aware of what's coming,” Medunjanin insists. “That's what we're talking about, and it's getting better and better. [Auston] Trusty is doing very good, and Jack [Elliott] too.
“I always tell them: Speak more, shout to people next to you! It's much easier when you speak with each other. When you get the goal, then everybody blames everybody; but nobody said anything before. It's so easy to speak afterwards. You should do that in the beginning to prevent that kind of thing. You should say, 'Haris, on your right!'”
The beauty of how Medunjanin views soccer, the secret locked away behind all the communication and team-oriented, mentally draining work he preaches, is the expressiveness it allows in attack. Organized defensive shape and control of space creates reliable first passes after turnovers. This, in turn, increases the time playmakers have on the ball during those important transition moments when an opposing defense is disorganized.
“People think, ‘It's just your man,’ he explains when discussing the Union’s current defensive system. “It's not your man, because if you play the No. 6 position, you need to help the guy who is playing No. 8, so the other No. 8 should already be inside. And most of the time, we think we can just stay there, and then there's a lot of space in the midfield, and I'm not the type of player that can take this! I know my qualities — it's impossible for me. I don't know what kind of player can play with so much space around him; I think only [Ngolo] Kante can play with these kinds of things.
"I think that's the main problem we had in the beginning,” he continues. “We were only thinking forward. We weren't thinking to tuck in to make sure the space was short so we could get the ball and play quickly forward. That's what we did in Atlanta, and that's what we did against Columbus.”
The final point, the one that ties it all together — and the understanding of which justifies Jim Curtin’s trust in Medunjanin — is that playing this organized defensive framework is what allows a team to compete with any opponent regardless of skill or salary. Ernst Tanner has said before that counterpressing is the best playmaker, but unstructured pressing is just a lot of running around. Coordination, teamwork, and communication are the great equalizers in soccer, and when they are utilized well they unlock new doors to victory that previously appeared shut.
“I've played in a lot of leagues,” Medunjanin smiles. “Here, you can win against everyone. It's not like there's a team that can beat you easily. No.
“Everywhere you go, you can take points. When we went to Atlanta, you play with 60-70k people, you know that they are a good team but if you make them uncomfortable; playing really tight lines close to each other from the strikers to the midfield, the midfield to the defense, then for every team it's very difficult. Especially if they play slow possession. For us, it's important to stay close to our men and always pressure the ball or the opponent.”
Medunjanin and the Union have steadily improved their defensive structure over the first four matches of the season. They will look to do so again this weekend against FC Cincinnati as they look to climb into the top half of the Eastern Conference standings.
