Columbus Crew defender Jonathan Mensah still adjusting to new team, home

Published on: 13 July 2017
Columbus Crew defender Jonathan Mensah still adjusting to new team, home
Jonathan Mensah

If there’s one attribute Jonathan Mensah appreciates about his new city, it’s the calm.

There is never too much noise in Columbus, and only the most astute Crew SC fans recognize him in public.

“Sometimes you can even do things without people recognizing you. That is something that I like,” Mensah said. “When I’m on the pitch, I’m with the guys. But when I’m away, I like my peace and my own space and that is what it is in Columbus. I really like the city a lot.”

Mensah’s demeanor, too, often reflects his appreciation for peaceful surroundings. Count him among the most polite and soft-spoken on Crew SC’s roster.

Which is perhaps why his first few months with Crew SC have made for a difficult adjustment.

Just as the team has been through ups and downs over 20 games, Mensah remains in search of an on-field steadiness.

The 26-year-old Ghanaian center back, acquired as a designated player in January, has at his best provided physicality and effective play in the air.

At his worst, he has been the culprit in key errors leading to game-changing goals.

With a designated player contract — Mensah will make $844,000 in guaranteed money this season, according to players’ union figures — comes expectations, and Mensah has occasionally drawn the ire of Crew fans on social media. But, he explained in an interview with The Dispatch last month, he shares those expectations. He acknowledged difficulty in getting adjusted early this season.

“I think as a player you always want more. You want to do more for your team, and it wasn’t easy adjusting,” Mensah said. “I played just two games, suspended (due to a red card), came back one game, then injured (for a month). So it was like, ‘Wow.’ I’ve never been anywhere where it has happened this way. It was kind of like, ‘Oof.’ ”

When Mensah returned to the starting lineup, he looked like a player who had just returned from a month-long hamstring injury. He didn’t push too far forward and played tentatively, wanting to work his way back while avoiding reinjury.

“I was hesitating to do what I do all the time. I was kind of holding back because I didn’t want it to go back (to being injured). I was just taking my time, nice and easy,” Mensah said.

“But it was kind of hard adjusting because we want points. I know who I am, who I used to be, and it’s always hard. But it’s like a process, you know? It’s a long, long season and we don’t need to be in a rush or in panic. Whatever happens, we just need to keep working.''

After Crew SC’s 2-0 loss to Atlanta United on July 1, coach Gregg Berhalter said of Mensah, “At times it has been very good and at times it hasn’t been so good,” comparing Mensah’s season-long performance to the rest of the back line.

Over the final 14 games of the season, Mensah will look to justify the resources used to bring him to Columbus, not unlike how he began his professional soccer career as a 17-year-old.

David Duncan, former coach of Ashanti Gold in the Ghanaian Premier League, held at the end of every season what he called a “justify your inclusion” exercise, in which he invited trialists to train for an opportunity to displace current members of his team. Mensah remembers working out for Duncan for one to two weeks before showing enough to earn his first professional contract for the 2007-08 season. With it came a promise from Duncan to help develop the young center back.

“Because he hadn’t had too much exposure, I kind of waited on him for a while, just so he would settle,” Duncan said. “With the kind of fans that we had, when you’re bringing in a player who is not well-known, it’s very difficult for them to accept him, even if he’s doing the right things. So I made him stay back and watch what was happening for a while. I didn’t just want to throw him in the deep end without preparing his mind for it.”

Duncan then landed a job with the Free State Stars of the South African Premier Division and took Mensah with him.

“The food, the dance, the people, the language, the team, everything was different,” Mensah said of playing in South Africa starting in 2008. “I was there to work and I just need to adjust and that is what I did.”

Mensah worked through several more adjustments, signing with Udinese and playing 15 games on loan with Granada before moving on to Evian in France in 2011.

Last February, he moved once again, signing with FC Anzhi Makhachkala of the Russian Premier League.

Meanwhile, he watched MLS games from afar, keeping an eye on Crew SC’s Harrison Afful and other Ghanaian players in the league.

In the months leading up to Mensah’s acquisition, Afful lobbied hard for Mensah to consider MLS as a destination. Mensah took his friend at his word.

“He was happy here with his family, friends, Ghanaian population here,” Mensah said. “Everything was good for him, and if it wasn’t that good he was going to let me know. He wouldn’t jeopardize our friendship.”

The trust Mensah showed stems from a years-long friendship that began with the Ghanaian national team in the lead-up to the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations in Angola.

“Whenever one of us says something to each other, you don’t have to think twice, you just have to go for it,” Afful said. “I’m sure he made the right choice, that’s what I’d say.”

Mensah is working on visas for his mother, father, sister and girlfriend. He is excited for them to see him play and train, and he hopes by the time they get here he is a part of a more-polished product along the back line. He hopes to show that to the fans, too.

“I know the fans expect a lot from the team, and they expect a lot from individuals as well,” Mensah said. “So if they know what I’m capable of, they say, ‘Come on Jonny, we know what you can do.’ I need to do much, much more for the team because I know what I can do.”

Txt: dispatch.com

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