There's an old sports adage that gets trotted out when coaches are fired and it roughly translates to: "You can't fire the players."
Count Haris Medunjanin as one that subscribes to the adage.
"It's very difficult to send 25 players away," Medunjanin, an FC Cincinnati midfielder and MLS veteran, said Tuesday following the club's first full-team training session since now-former head coach Jaap Stam's firing was announced Monday.
That one remark encapsulated the feelings of the two players that addressed media Tuesday as the dust continued to settle on Stam's departure.
Medunjanin, along with Geoff Cameron, both agreed the blame for FC Cincinnati's failings in 2021 weren't all attributable to Stam.
"That’s what happens in football," Medunjanin said. "The coaches come and go, and now it happened to coach Stam. We need to continue. It was a tough time for us. We struggled a lot, we didn’t win games and there’s always possibility that the coach gets the blame. I don’t think that it’s always on the coach because you still have 23, 24 players who need to do it on the field.
"That’s how it goes. Every time something goes wrong, the coach gets the first blame."
The "tough time" Medunjanin referred was not just the club's 4-13-8 overall record, but the fact that Cincinnati's won just one of its last 16 matches.
Cameron pointed to the FC Cincinnati badge on his Adidas training top just prior to Tuesday practice session while suggesting Stam's firing "should light some fires under some people's butts."
"There's a lot of things that guys are playing for: Contracts, extensions and their future here," Cameron said. "We have nine game to show that, to show the staff who really wants to be here, who really wants to represent this club and who actually really cares. That should be our mindset for everyone here. Losing is a contagious thing. It’s very easy to lose because you just get complacent and it just keeps happening and happening and happening. Things don’t go your way, you need a bit of luck here and there."
More:Analysis: Did results or FC Cincinnati's GM search lead to Jaap Stam's firing?
Cameron said it wasn't pleasant coming to the Mercy Health Training Facility on Monday knowing Stam, along with assistant Yoann Damet and Said Bakkati, had lost their jobs, and that the players felt the responsibility of that.
Now, the players face the responsibility of attempting to make something respectable of the 2021 season with nine matches to go before another long offseason that promises to bring more significant changes to FC Cincinnati.
Medunjanin and Cameron are two of the more conversational and constructive FCC players that engage with the media, and they offered valuable insights during their respective remarks.
Both deftly swerved any extensive mention of internal issues involving the team and the coaching staff, although Medunjanin briefly seemed to reference Stam's short bench and substitution patterns, which became a topic of midseason discussion.
"We had a couple of games, you know, that we could do something but I don't know what happened over there or – I know what could happen but like I said, I'm not gonna talk about here (and) now what happened and (didn't)," Medunjanin said. "I'm a player. I'm not a coach, so I'm not gonna speak what could be better, what could be not better... If you don't use your whole squad, it's very tough to win. That's how it is. You cannot use just 12-13 players. You need to use your whole squad if you want to achieve something in MLS."
Medunjanin also said it was easy for anyone to criticize a coach's decisions post-firing, saying, "everyone's the best coach after the game."
With nine matches to play, FC Cincinnati is barely relevant in the overall MLS scene.
The playoffs, while mathematically possible, are likely out of reach with FCC trailing the seventh and final Eastern Conference playoff team by 17 points.
A winning record isn't possible, even if the club went on an unprecedented run of form to close out the year.
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