The Canaries are understood to be closing in on the addition of the Croatian centre back, with just paperwork to complete on his £1.8m plus add-ons move to Carrow Road. Medic will follow Harry Darling through the door as Norwich add to their defensive ranks.
Medic spent the entirety of last season on loan at Bundesliga side Bochum – so we caught up with commentator Dan O’Hagan for the lowdown on the soon-to-be City defender.
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CS: Thank you for joining us Dan. What kind of player could Norwich City sign in Jakov Medic?
DoH: They will be signing a very modern defender, and technically Medic is excellent, but also has the kind of physical edge as well. I think he’s six foot three, he’s really imposing. It’s a funny one because Croatian players normally come through the big clubs like Dynamo Zagreb, Hajduk Split and Rijeka. This guy didn’t; he came through the small clubs, went to the German fourth division with Nürnberg’s reserve team, and then had to climb up from there. He then went to St Pauli in Hamburg, then in the second division, and did really well. A couple of promotion near misses. Medic became a really elegant, technically very good, yet equally strong defender. Ajax are not a club you join unless you can play a bit. So that should tell you that, technically, this guy is the real deal. Bochum came along with a loan offer last summer. It was maybe the wrong choice of club because Bochum were a team who were always going to find it difficult. They’d survived by the skin of their teeth the year before in the playoffs. It was tough because they were always on the back foot, and it wasn’t really the team for a ball-playing defender to excel. There was a change of coach fairly early on, and the coach who came in, Dieter Hecking, was far more back to basics and wanted players who could be more old-school, rugged defenders. So, he didn’t really start as many games as he had hoped to. Bochum went down, but Medic was not culpable in that at all.
CS: When we talk about ball-playing qualities, that can sometimes come to the detriment of their defensive capabilities. Can he do the basics?
DoH: He looks like a defender. He is a big, burly guy, uncompromising, but he also has that footballing edge to his game. I’ve got to say, when I saw him play, it wasn’t a player who I thought, ‘he’ll go to England’. He didn’t jump out like that. But when you sit back and think about what you saw and what he does have, you can see it makes sense. I think for Norwich, it’s an upgrade on what they have, certainly defensively. He’s a good age. There’ll be resale value there as well, which these days, of course, is important as well for clubs in Norwich’s position. I think what they’ve got there is a player with all the tools in the toolkit to do well in the Championship and certainly will add to and, I think, upgrade on what Norwich have currently in that position.
CS: There has been plenty of talk about whether Liam Manning will play a back three or four at Norwich City. Medic played in a trio at Bochum – is he more suited to that system?
DoH: He did play in a three for the most part at Pauli and Bochum as well. I mean, he is a very capable defender, footballing defender, who can play in a three or a back four. So, I’d have no qualms about that. Obviously, Liam Manning will have his ideas on how he wants to set up. If he wants to play with a three, then Medic can certainly play that role right, left or in the middle of that three. So, a good, flexible, versatile, modern centre back, which I think ticks for Norwich a lot of boxes.
CS: Bochum had a permanent option to sign Medic this summer, but decided not to take that up. Was that a surprise given some of his performances?
DoH: In Germany, relegation, as in England, but Germany especially, the budgets get slashed. So, they couldn’t afford to sign him, even if they wanted to really. Bochum are a club who don’t have huge sums. They can’t afford to spend even two or three million euros on a player. And when he’d just gone down, it was just a bridge too far. They could not afford to make that transfer permanent. Had they stayed up, maybe they would have done. But as I say, he only started half their league games last season. So, I don’t think, under Dieter Hecking, when he came in, a much more old-school coach, I don’t think Medic was really his cup of tea. He wasn’t his signing, obviously. He came in the autumn.
CS: It sounds like Norwich City have beaten off interest from the Bundesliga as well as the Championship. Is it a risk for him to come to England at this stage of his career?
DoH: He knows the German game well. At St Pauli, he was one of the best defenders in the second division and at looked at home in the top division with Bochum. I can see that certainly clubs like Mainz and Augsburg and that kind of mid-tier would maybe have wanted to make an offer because he surely can play at that level. But I think for the player, he’ll want to try his luck now in England. He’s done well in Germany. He’s cracked that market and now wants to try somewhere else. So, obviously, Norwich is an attractive club, a great place to go and live. Norwich is a draw for players because it’s an exciting project. They’ve been in the Premier League in the not-too-distant past. And that’s where Medic will want to be eventually. Norwich have got themselves a defender who is better than what they have. He’s got a relatively good pedigree for a player who’s still relatively young, ticks those boxes and looks to be a really good acquisition.