Happy MNUFC preseason! The Loons started their preparations yesterday in Blaine, and also announced their preseason schedule yesterday, a timeline which - when you think about it - is a little hard to believe. Here’s what fans need to know:

  • The Loons are playing five preseason games, two in Florida (against Chicago and Orlando City) and three in the Portland Timbers’ preseason tournament (rumored to be against Portland, Real Salt Lake, and Viking FC of Norway)
  • You cannot attend any of those matches
  • You cannot even WATCH those matches online
  • The less you think about these matches the better, I guess?

This still feels counterproductive to me. MLB spring training is practically a national holiday. The NFL, NBA, and NHL televise most of their preseason games.

I’m not saying that there would even be a ton of Loons fans who are likely to watch these preseason scrimmages, but there are certainly a few! Enough that it has to be worth it to, like, point a phone at the game and invite fans to join a Zoom call or something.

Sometimes MLS, as a whole, gives off the impression that they want you to be a fan, but not TOO big of a fan. Just sort of a casual observer, but with deep pockets.

As for training itself, Jerry Zgoda, in the Star Tribune, notes that several big-name players are missing, via international duty, international paperwork, military duty, and Covid. So we’re one day into the preseason and already the entire squad is back in mid-2021 form.


In other news, the Twitter rumor mill is aflame that former MNUFC striker Luis Amarilla was not coming back to MNUFC at all, but instead was heading to Nacional in Uruguay, or possibly elsewhere in South America, or perhaps to Minnesota after all, fooled you!

I won’t link to the tweets because they do tend to strike you as agents playing games. Then again, Rafael Navarro was all but done and dusted to arrive in Minnesota from Botafogo, when suddenly Palmeiras swooped in to make him their 2,000th signing of the off-season. So perhaps there is truth to this after all.

I questioned last week whether the Loons had enough space for all these forwards, but if Amarilla isn’t in the picture, then there’s really no muddle at all - and the Abu Danladi signing seems extremely necessary, rather than kind of confusing.

Eleven days until the first pre-season game. 39 until the first regular season game. The shortest off-season ever gets ever shorter.