Barely 14 hours after leaving Allianz Field, I was back on Sunday afternoon, to see the dawn of the MNUFC2 era, and the first MLS NEXT PRO game for the Doubloons. Of course, I wanted to see any number of Loons players, but mostly I was there for one thing: to find out what these games were going to feel like.

Ultimately, the vibe was pretty much exactly what I expected: an early-season Minnesota Thunder game, crossed with a Triple-A baseball game.

I’ve repeatedly fallen back on that Triple-A metaphor to try to explain MLS NEXT PRO, and that matched up pretty well with reality. The MNUFC lineup had first-team guys that just needed to stay sharp and get some playing time. It had teenaged prospects who need to play at a higher level to continue to develop. It had young guys outside the first team that are hoping to impress someone and get a chance to play more at a higher level. It was Triple-A, down to the ground.

Maybe the biggest difference, though, was that this second team wasn’t toiling away in semi-obscurity. They were playing in the same stadium as the first team, and with the eyes of the club squarely on them. The first-team coaching staff was there, much of the front office was in attendance - even a dozen or so MNUFC players showed up at Allianz Field, some of whom took the chance to sit in the stands and spend their time heckling the referees.

“I think it’s great,” said MNUFC2 head coach Cameron Knowles. “To have guys come out to see their teammates and guys from within the club play, I think that’s important. You’ve got the full first-team staff out here, you’ve got lot of people from the front office here. I think that’s what makes a club. That’s why we have the second team, to connect to the academy, for everyone to come out and be a part of it and take ownership over its success.”

What they saw, unfortunately, was a second loss in two days for the club. MNUFC2 gave up a second-minute goal to Collin Fernandez, then a 63rd-minute score from Matteo Bunbury (younger brother of MLS veteran Teal, and a Minnesotan, making good on his homecoming), and lost 2-0 to Sporting KC II.

Said Knowles, “We talked in this game about coming out and being more aggressive and starting on the front foot, and being a bit more difficult to break down, and we didn’t do that, not until the second half. And then already you’re chasing it, so that’s the difficulty with this one. Between the two halves, second half we were the much better team, and then you concede the second goal, that’s always going to make it tough.”

As you might have expected, the standout Loons were the first-teamers. Jacori Hayes put in a 90-minute shift as a defensive midfielder, Niko Hansen had a couple of really good chances from right wing and rattled the woodwork in the first half, and Justin McMaster looked pretty good playing as a central attacking midfielder, and almost made it two goals from two games in the second half.

As for the young homegrown players: Aziel Jackson came in at halftime and created some chances after sliding into that number 10 role (somehow, doing so while appearing to play with a paper towel in his mouth.)

Fred Emmings made a couple of good saves in goal - one in the first minute, where he had to claw away a close-range shot that practically landed on top of him after a dive, and one in the second half, when he made an excellent reaction save on a deflection. He also had some learning moments, like the second SKC II goal, when he came a long way out to challenge a contested shot, allowing Bunbury to roll the ball underneath him for a much easier goal.

Devin Padelford, the team’s newest homegrown signing, looked like he fit in pretty well at left back, despite just having come up from the team’s academy. Like Emmings, he had good moments and bad moments, but for someone at the place he’s at in his career, just looking like he belonged is an accomplishment.

He also gave the best fullback quote of all time, saying, “It’s not necessarily always how you’re playing with the ball at your feet, it’s if you’re willing to do the dirty work and being able to run for 90 minutes. If I’m able to do that, good things come when you’re running all over the place.”

Knowles acknowledged that, for the young players, these games will always be a learning experience. “These guys need games and they need feedback,” he said. “We’ll sit down and talk with them during the week about what went well and what didn’t, and how they can solve problems on the field. They’ve come through and been good at the academy level, now they have to get up to speed at this level and push on to the next level, and that’s our job to keep them moving forward.”

Sunday, though, felt less about the result, and more about the start of something for MNUFC.

Notes

• Striker Tani Oluwaseyi and defender Callum Montgomery, both of whom started in week one against North Texas, were held out of the game with minor injuries.
• The Loons played almost entirely out of the same 4-2-3-1 that the senior team plays. “We have to have a structure that makes sense, so that a player like Devin is getting evaluated so that he they can see if he can do that job with the first team, and that it’s not a completely different position or tasks that you’re asking of him,” said Knowles.
• Three players from the MNUFC youth development program made the bench - defender Anthony Mator and defender Drew Brown, as well as Johapson Cetina, who I cannot find a position for.
• That’s according to the official MLS NEXT PRO box score, which also had Joseph Rosales on the bench, and he played 45 minutes the previous evening against Seattle. That can’t be right, can it?
• The official attendance for the game was 461. It also snowed off and on throughout the game. A hearty kudos to each and every one of those 461 people, some of whom weren’t even related to Padelford, Emmings, or Emmanuel Iwe.

Nine losses in eleven games.

It’s kind of hard to believe Minnesota’s record against Seattle.

Sure, you could see how it would happen in 2017 and 2018, when the Loons were new and losing to everybody. Seattle winning all four games in those two seasons was almost expected, since the Sounders were beating everyone then, too. And in 2019 the Loons had a home draw and a road loss, which is not an awful record.

But even over the last three years, it’s just kept going. There was the horrifying 2020 Western Conference finals, when the league gave Seattle two extra days of rest so that MNUFC’s semifinal could be on national TV. There was an opening-day 4-0 loss and a September 1-0 loss last year (albeit sandwiched around the only Loons win.)

And for about 80 minutes on Saturday night, Seattle’s 2-1 win simply looked like yet another Sounders beatdown.

For the first ten minutes, Minnesota had a pretty good foothold in the game. The Loons set their press in the hopes of forcing the ball to Seattle’s right center back Jackson Rogen - who ended up being heavily involved in the game in a number of ways. They specifically seemed to want him to play the ball down the right wing, force the Sounders to run their offense through Cristian Roldan, keep Roldan out wide, and keep Seattle from playing through the midfield.

This setup meant that, if they wanted the ball on the left, Seattle had to either try to play 75-yard diagonals to Jordan Morris on the left - right back Alex Roldan tried this twice, and it worked once - or to try to have deep-lying midfielders Joao Paolo and Albert Rusnak actually dribble the ball all the way across the field.

It crossed the Sounders up enough that the Loons got a couple of really excellent transition opportunities, including one shot from Abu Danladi that hit a defender and went off the crossbar. But even as they were earning more opportunities, the Loons’ game as a whole was going off the rails. Said midfielder Wil Trapp:

“It felt like, if we just convert one of these, it’s going to be a good night for us. You saw the impatience come through. We were generating chances. We were coming on a break, and then we’re trying to do it every time. When the game becomes almost like a Final Four basketball game, you get tired and the spaces get bigger, and then you’re running a little bit more. They have good players that get around the ball and their understanding of space is impressive. It almost hurt us slightly, in the sense of, how many chances we were generating off the break because our impatience showed through.”

Like Trapp said, after that initial burst, the Loons started having more trouble getting a foot on the ball, and when the Sounders start coming in waves, eventually they’re going to score. Trapp lost the ball in midfield, Seattle made a couple of extra passes, and Joao Paulo arrived to score yet another thunderbolt against the Loons, hammering a 20-yard blast into the top corner.

Three minutes into the second half, the Sounders doubled their lead. A one-two in midfield sprung Jordan Morris down the left, and Brent Kallman - in scramble mode and trying to block Morris’s cross across the goalmouth - accidentally deflected the ball into his own net. It was an own goal, but it was almost unavoidable; any center back is going to score a few of those in his career, simply out of sheer bad luck.

For the most part, though, the time between Seattle’s opener and Minnesota’s opener was just a stalemate. Adrian Heath made a tactical shift at halftime, inserting midfielder Joseph Rosales in place of Danladi on the left wing, specifically to try to get an extra player into the midfield. “We had to get another body in there to get us a foothold in the game,” said Heath. “We could keep three players higher up the field. The line of confrontation was a lot closer to their goal, and they were under more pressure, so they didn’t have as much time to pick the pass.”

All was quiet until the 81st minute, when Rosales - who played a big role in driving the offense forward in the second half - exchanged a one-two with Robin Lod to burst into the penalty area. He lost the ball, but an awkward challenge from Rogen turned into a body-check, and referee Ismail Elfath pointed to the spot. Emanuel Reynoso converted the penalty.

It made the game 2-1; it also made the game total chaos.

The Sounders, reduced to playing to hold onto three points, began to fall apart defensively, to the point that at one point I was counting defenders just to make sure I hadn’t missed two players getting sent off or something. Lod flicked a corner on, and Michael Boxall didn’t make good contact on a header that was cleared off the line. Seconds later, a deflection fell to Lod on the penalty spot, but his shot through traffic was too near to Stefan Frei.

90 seconds later, a harmless Kemar Lawrence cross caused a mix-up between Frei and Rogen. The two collided, the ball fell to Luis Amarilla, but the striker somehow poked the ball wide of the post. And in stoppage time, Bongokuhle Hlongwane had a difficult chance that he skied to the top of the south stands.

“At the end of the game, we’re pushing,” said Trapp. “That’s more of what we are as a team, and what we need to bring out from the beginning. Getting punched in the mouth and then having to come back only gets you so far.”

The final ten minutes turned what seemed like a beatdown into a classic “how did the Loons not end up with at least a point” game. That said, though, a loss at home is a loss at home, no matter how good Seattle is. The Sounders may be one of the top teams in the league, and they may be “one of the most storied franchises in MLS,” as Heath said. But the Loons want to be recognized as one of the league’s top teams too, and you don’t get there by losing at home, to anyone.

Heath chose to look on the bright side. “We’re talking about a team that’s in the semi-final of the Champions League,” he said. “They’re just a really good team, and every time that you play a really good team, if you don’t play well - which we didn’t in the first half - it’s gonna be difficult. Tonight was difficult for us. Second half, I thought there were a lot of positives.”

Trapp was less philosophical. “They’re a team that, at times, has our number,” he said, “and we don’t like that.”

Notes

• Other than Chase Gasper and Patrick Weah, who are out indefinitely, the only player who was held out of the 20-man squad through injury was Romain Métanire. Kervin Arriaga also did not make the squad, simply because he wasn’t back in time from national-team duty, something Heath was frustrated with. “This week hasn’t been easy with people away, international duty, you don’t know who’s coming back. Like [Seattle head coach Brian Schmetzer] was saying the other day, it’s difficult. The guys go away for two weeks, and you get them back a day before the next game, which is ridiculous.”
• Heath was optimistic about next Sunday’s lineup at Austin. “Hopefully Romain will be available for selection by next week as well, which will help,” he said. “We’ll have some big decisions to make, but I’m just pleased to get a few of the guys back. Fragapane trained the last couple of days, so I would think by the middle of next week, hopefully, we’ll have a full complement to play and pick from.”
• Danladi’s start on the left wing was his first of the season. Kemar Lawrence made his first appearance as a Loon as a second-half substitute.

A few months ago, I wrote about the received wisdom that “a point on the road is a good result” in CONCACAF World Cup qualifying. With qualifying all but done and dusted, I thought I’d update those standings and see whether the received wisdom is true.

As a reminder, this math awards no points for a home win, minus-2 for a home draw, and minus-3 for a home loss; two points for an away win, zero points for an away draw, and minus-one for an away loss. This is based on the idea that the baseline is winning all your home games and drawing all your road games, and any points dropped from that baseline are a problem.

Some takeaways:

• The USA’s road record is the worst of the top four, especially against the four eliminated teams. Canada is 2-1-0, Mexico is 3-1-0, and Costa Rica is 2-2-0 in those games. The Americans are 1-2-1. A point on the road isn’t great when the opposition is bad.
• It is odd that Mexico has a better record on the road than at home.
• Not winning a home game in CONCACAF is difficult, but Honduras and (so far) Jamaica have managed it.
• The single biggest result of this qualifying campaign might be Mexico’s win at Costa Rica last September. If Los Ticos had even pulled out a home draw, they’d be level with Mexico going into the final day of qualifying. Instead, all Mexico needs is a draw at home with El Salvador.
• Second place is probably the USA’s loss at Panama, the only instance so far of a team in the top four losing to a team in the bottom four.

Staring at the standings now, it’s hard to believe we ever thought they’d come out differently. CONCACAF is just a wildly unfair region, with two heavyweights and a slowly-unfreezing northern giant. That Costa Rica has a chance to qualify at all is an accomplishment.

It’s hard for MNUFC fans not to feel a little bit giddy after the Loons stole three points from New York on Sunday.

Minnesota was without starting goalkeeper Tyler Miller, starting center back Bakaye Dibassy, starting left back Chase Gasper, starting right back Romain Métanire, and first-choice-backup fullback Oniel Fisher. They were playing in frozen New Jersey, against a Red Bull New York team that won both of its opening two games.

There’s more. Minnesota was overrun for about the first 15 minutes of the game. RBNY earned a penalty. Emanuel Reynoso played his worst game in MLS, repeatedly passing to nowhere and turning MNUFC’s only two good offensive chances into zero goals.

How did the Loons win this one 1-0?

The short answer is that goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair made at least five world-class stops, including saving the penalty (which actually might have been his least spectactular save). On the other end, Hassani Dotson recycled a set piece back into the ol’ penalty area, and Luis Amarilla volleyed it home. And there’s your 1-0 right there.

A few thoughts:

1) The Loons officially have a goalkeeper controversy on their hands. Miller missed the game with the flu, which opened the door for St. Clair’s best performance since late 2020, and one of the all-time outstanding goalkeeper performances the Loons have seen. It’s hard to imagine St. Clair not getting another chance, after that performance - but at the same time, it’s a little hard to imagine anyone losing a starting spot just because they have the flu. This is not a problem, exactly - every team wants as many good players as possible - but it does feel like something’s got to give.

2) The Loons probably also have a midfield selection headache. Minnesota wanted to give Hassani Dotson an extended run of games in midfield, to see if he could make that spot his own. With three fullbacks missing, Dotson had to revert back to his super-utility role from last season, filling in at right back - where he gave away a penalty with a handball in the first half, and was very near to giving away another in the second half for the same reason. And so ideally he’d just go back to the midfield… except that Kervin Arriaga was immense, maybe the best outfield player for the Loons. Wil Trapp wasn’t great in this one, but he’s the team’s captain. So if you don’t need to pick Dotson at fullback, then who do you pick in the midfield?

3) We’re now entering “worried about Rey” territory. Through three games, Emanuel Reynoso doesn’t have a goal, and doesn’t have an assist, and absolutely has to lead MLS in giving the ball away. Give New York credit for smothering him - you can credit them for smothering the entire Loons attack, as Reynoso wasn’t the only one who couldn’t complete a pass to save himself - but his performance was probably his worst so far since his arrival in 2020. Compounding it was that he had the Loons’ two best chances of the night, and once he didn’t even get a shot away, and once he shot tamely at the keeper when he had all the time in the world and no reason not to find the back of the net.

4) The Loons have four points from two of their most difficult games of the season. Minnesota has eight games against the Eastern Conference this year, and they were oddly divided. They had four games against the best in the east (at Philly, at RBNY, at New England, home against NYCFC) and four against some smoldering tire fires (at Miami, Cincinnati, Chicago, D.C.). They’ve played two of the three most difficult and come away with a tie in Philadelphia and a win in New Jersey. That is probably three more points than I would have expected out of those games. That’s an awfully good start.

I’ve been observing Adrian Heath’s press conferences for a while now. I get the strong sense that the MNUFC manager always knows what he’s after, in communicating through these situations. He comes across as frustrated sometimes, or pleased, but not always when you’d expect him to be. He also never, ever lambastes players in the media, and will tell you straight out that he won’t criticize players in that way.

So any time Heath says something that can be interpreted in any way as a criticism, my ears perk up.

But at the same time, pulling a criticism out of what he’s saying also feels like building the proverbial mountain out of the proverbial molehill. So if you’re not interested in watching me try to construct a big ol’ hill, maybe skip this.

Here’s what Heath said after Saturday’s game against Nashville: “As we are at this moment in time, the team is picking itself. When we get to Friday, I feel as though this is our best group at this moment in time.”

On the face of it, this is a comment about the Loons’ injury list. Heath was missing both starting fullbacks against Nashville, as well as Kervin Arriaga - who started in week one - and Abu Danladi, a veteran forward.

And if you run down the Loons’ bench on Saturday, you see what he means. DJ Taylor started six games last year, and ended up playing fullback in the second half as MNUFC looked for more speed on the wings. Niko Hansen had five starts last year, and was one of the backup forwards. Five of the seven other outfield players didn’t make a start in 2021. You can see how the team picks itself…

… except for Adrien Hunou.

The French striker, the team’s marquee signing of 2021, the man who was brought in to lead the line for the Loons, has been on the field for less than a quarter-hour in the first two weeks of 2022. He came on in the 84th minute against Philadelphia; against Nashville, he didn’t play at all. Not after a 70-minute weather delay, not as Minnesota searched for an equalizer, not as the Loons later pressed for the winner.

Obviously, there’s a lot more competition for Hunou this season than there was last season. Last year, the team’s injury crisis was such that the options were:

1) Play Hunou. 2) Play Robin Lod up front and try to fill in behind him with whoever was able to walk on that particular day. 3) Play Fanendo Adi up front (tried once, never tried again).

That’s not the case now! Luis Amarilla is back in Minnesota, and is first-choice. Abu Danladi is back in Minnesota, and there was some preseason evidence that he’s second-choice right now. And option #2 above seems a lot more attractive when you can pick Franco Fragapane and Bongokuhle Hlongwane, or Niko Hansen, or any of a number of other options as the wide forwards.

Not only is Hunou not the automatic first choice this year - as players return to health, it’s starting to look like it’s a battle for Hunou to even get into the 20-man squad for match day, because at the moment he might be as far down the list as the fourth option at the number-nine spot.

I think, for the most part, fans want to see Hunou succeed. There’s no reason to root against him, and last season was a tough ask - to come to a new country and slot right into the lineup, all during a pandemic.

But the one thing MNUFC has this year is the luxury of not needing Hunou to succeed. And if the team is “picking itself,” without him in it - that’s some bad, bad news.

Part of the weight that the Designated Player tag carries is an absolute and cold-hearted need for production. Using those three DP slots well is important for every team in the league, but even more so for teams like MNUFC that aren’t major destinations for overseas players. The Loons aren’t going to have Designated Players they can just offload and replace; they’re going to have to make those big acquisitions count.

If Hunou can’t get to the point where the team is picking itself, with him in it, then Minnesota United is going to have to make some tough decisions.

I’ve written much for Sota Soccer as the MLS season has gotten off the ground. It’s very much the same sort of thing as here on this blog.

First, I wrote a hearty welcome to MNUFC and the sport of soccer for angry Twins fans. I admit I was flattered by the response to this, as many people on social media seemed to really like it.

I also wrote a preview of the MNUFC-Nashville match, and while the match is over, I think some of it - the complaining about conference alignment especially - is still of interest.

And finally, just today I wrote about how Bongokuhle Hlongwane is already filling a role that the Loons never really filled last season.

MNUFC has one point after one game of the 2022 season. I don’t think that’s disappointing, because that point came on the road against Philadelphia, a very good team - and also because that point means the Loons have already exceeded their point total from the first four games of 2021. Here are a few things that I think we learned from the 1-1 draw.

1) This already seems like the deepest MNUFC squad of the MLS era. At the last minute, the Loons ended up with three key injuries. Left back Chase Gasper, right back Romain Métanire, and defensive midfielder Wil Trapp all missed week one, forcing the Loons to already dip into their bench. And you know what? It was fine. Brent Kallman came in at center back, Bakaye Dibassy slid over to left back, new signing Oniel Fisher started at right back, and new signing Kervin Arriaga slotted into the midfield (according to Adrian Heath, his clearance to play came through while the team was on the plane - they flew him to Philadelphia solely in the hope his paperwork might come through.)

Both Dibassy and Fisher did fine at outside back. Arriaga was good in his first MLS game, showing an impressive motor and the ability to link play from back to front. And the one Philadelphia goal came from a comedy of defensive mistakes - Emanuel Reynoso not clearing a corner and giving the Union a second chance, two MNUFC players failing to close down a potential cross, Tyler Miller misjudging the ball’s flight, Cory Burke popping up for a header between two Loons defenders who were marking nobody.

Okay, a comedy of errors is bad, but apart from that the defense was just fine, even though it was missing two of four starters in the back line as well, as the team’s captain and starting defensive midfielder.

2) Rumors of a lack of team grit have been greatly exaggerated. The Loons won more tackles than the Union did (10 to 9) as well as almost as many duels (63 to 60 - this according to the official MLS stats). It was a day for 50-50 balls and a day for battles in the midfield, and the Loons kept coming out with the ball and starting counter-attacks - in fact, at times it looked like nothing so much as board battles for the puck in hockey, with the Loons winning the battle, digging out the puck and getting it to the net.

Minnesota also kept things tight for the final half-hour when Philly was looking for a winner, and actually was the stronger team at the end, waiting for stoppage time for the single best chance of the match - an Adrien Hunou breakaway that Andre Blake tipped over the crossbar.

3) Adrien Hunou 2022 looks like Adrien Hunou 2021 so far. Of course it is unfair to talk about him missing a single chance, the smallest of all possible sample sizes, but it’s not like Hunou made things particularly difficult for Blake. His shot was directly at the keeper, and may even have been going over the net; depending on where you look, this chance was somwhere in the region of 0.25 expected goals. So after one game, and one attempted shot, Adrien Hunou is again leading the Loons in not finishing chances.

4) Bongokuhle Hlongwane may not be destined for MNUFC2 after all. According to the broadcast team, Hlongwane was even set to start the match at one point. Instead, the young South African settled for a first 20 minutes in a Minnesota jersey, including one extremely exciting moment in stoppage time where he picked up the ball on the edge of the penalty area, beat one defender, went past another, drew back his right foot to give MNUFC’s social media team an easy way to reach all of its engagement metrics for an entire year… and saw his shot go so wide it was nearer the corner flag than the far post. Such is life, I guess. But right now it seems like the coaching staff considers Hlongwane a player for now, not for later.

5) Emanuel Reynoso really could pick up more than 15 yellow cards this year. One match, one card. Reynoso had eight yellows and a red (later rescinded) last season, tied for the team lead with Chase Gasper and one ahead of the eternally-belligerent Ozzie Alonso. As time goes by, Reynoso raises his card game in MLS. The team record appears to be Francisco Calvo’s 11 cards in 2018; the league record is the 15 yellows that Leandro González Pirez picked up for Inter Miami just last season. Let us note that David Beckham once led the league in cards (2011), and just say that Reynoso has much to live up to in the talented/irritable department.

For more reaction from Saturday, I was on a live-stream / podcast / whatever kind of thing for Sota Soccer after the match.

I’m flattered that the team at Sota Soccer has asked me to contribute some MNUFC posts this year. Here is my first blog over there, looking at the reason MNUFC has so many doubters this season - and why those doubts may or may not be correct.

It’s week one of the MLS season, which seems impossible, what with the winter storm warnings blaring over today’s airwaves. Philadelphia’s weather is a little less ominous - it’ll be nearly 70 midweek before being mid-30s on Saturday - but still, this is too darn early for soccer season.

The big MNUFC news from the weekend was Luis Amarilla, who officially arrived on Saturday after being some version of “on the way” for approximately a month. Amarilla signed Saturday, played on Saturday evening against Viking FK, and promptly scored a goal, meaning that he quite honestly might be at the top of the striker depth chart for Saturday’s game.

This is an overreaction, but not entirely unwarranted. What little we saw of Amarilla in 2020 showed that he certainly can finish his chances, and Minnesota really hasn’t had someone else at striker who did that since Amarilla got hurt two seasons ago - unless you count Robin Lod, who’s playing on the wing.

It will be utterly fascinating to see who is in Minnesota’s lineup on Saturday - and not just at striker, either. Amarilla’s late arrival means that the Loons have shored up just about every position on the field.

Back at the start of the offseason, I wrote about how the Loons badly needed depth. Last year’s first-choice XI is mostly intact, apart from Ozzie Alonso’s departure: Miller, Métanire, Boxall, Dibassy, Gasper, Trapp, Dotson, Reynoso, Fragapane, Lod, Hunou.

If you were going to pick a second team, outside of last year’s team, here’s what it might look like:

• GK: Dayne St. Clair
• DF: Oniel Fisher, Brent Kallman, Nabi Kibunguchy, DJ Taylor
• MF: Joseph Rosales, Kervin Arriaga
• FW: Niko Hansen, Abu Danladi, Bongokuhle Hlongwane, Luis Amarilla

That’s kind of an exciting team? You’ve got a keeper with MLS experience, including playoff experience. You’ve got a back line that has two up-and-coming young players, and two veterans with 75+ MLS games. You’ve got Honduras’s central midfield of the future. You’ve got a front line with two guys who have been the main guy for the Loons before, plus an unknown South African potential star.

Look back at the Loons’ lineups from 2017 and 2018; you’d probably take this team over almost all of those squads.

Honestly, it’s been a pretty successful offseason for Minnesota. Last year’s team couldn’t finish chances, and went through a midseason period when it was not entirely unrealistic to consider which backup keeper would make the best emergency striker. The team used the offseason to build up depth across the field, and acquire, depending on who you consider a “striker,” somewhere between two and four additional strikers - and not just guys in the “declining veteran” stage of their careers.

Sure, the Loons didn’t make any particularly splashy signings. But they still have Emanuel Reynoso to create offensive chances, their defense was solid again last year and is all back for another go, and they’ve done a lot of work to shore up their biggest weaknesses.

And, lest we forget, the core of this team has made the playoffs three years running.

Last season, the entire year was an uphill slog after MNUFC lost its first four games of the year. That simply cannot happen again, even though the early schedule is not favorable: two road games in the northeast and a home game against one of the top teams in the West.

Unbelievably, we’ll start finding out what the Loons are about in five days.

For pretty much all of the 2021 season, Minnesota United’s goalscoring - or lack of it - was a pretty heated topic. It wasn’t a lack of offensive talent or even a lack of offensive creativity; the team, as a whole, simply could not find the back of the net.

According to the Expected Goals numbers from the venerable American Soccer Analysis, the Loons had the sixth-best offense in the league last year, as well as a top-10 defense. Yet by the end of the year, the scoreboard showed that Minnesota had actually allowed one more goal than they’d scored, tallying 41 and giving up 42. Their Expected Goal Difference was just above 9, meaning that they underperformed the xG by ten goals - the fourth-worst mark in the league, behind only Toronto (a disastrous tire fire), Cincinnati (saddled with the worst goalkeeping of all time), and LAFC (apparently cursed by a jade monkey’s paw).

Not converting chances was almost a team-wide thing. Striker Adrien Hunou underperformed expectations by nearly two goals, a mark somehow almost tied by backup striker Juan Agudelo (who only played 307 minutes). Robin Lod, who exceeded his xG mark by a rounding error, was the only blameless attacking player.

The lack of goals became one of the defining storylines of the season. In 34 games, the Loons were shut out eight times, and only scored more than two goals in a game twice (in a third, they got three, but one of them was a Los Angeles Galaxy own goal). Especially in the second half of the season, the consistent refrain was “MNUFC had chances, but just couldn’t finish.”

Minnesota brought in Abu Danladi in the offseason, and is on the verge of bringing back Luis Amarilla too, in the hopes of correcting this. And so it’s all the more frustrating that the story of Minnesota’s preseason so far is “Well, they’re having some trouble scoring goals.”

In four preseason games, the Loons have been shut out three times. They did get five goals in the other game, but only one of those came from a recognized first-team striker (Danladi).

Once again, on Wednesday against Real Salt Lake, Hunou was conspicuous by his absence from the starting lineup. The coaching staff has publicly praised Danladi more than any other player, too, and Danladi has started both games of the Portland tournament so far.

It’s starting to seem obvious, to me at least, that Danladi was not only cover at an important position, as well as being a still-young player for whom the Loons coaching staff still thinks the best is yet to come. Danladi is also a warning shot across Hunou’s bow, a message that I would imagine is being received loud and clear.

Sure, Hunou may be a designated player; according to the MLSPA numbers, he’s the highest-paid player on the team. But this is a message being sent, that apart from any contracts, minutes on the pitch will have to be earned.

Which makes his second-half miss against RSL even more of a match to dry tinder.

(By the way, this whole Twitter thread of clips from the RSL game, from Eli Hoff, is worth your time.)

At the moment, if the fans made a depth chart for the team at striker, the top two choices would likely be Amarilla (who doesn’t actually play for the team right now) and Lod (who is the starting right wing). If you asked social media, the correct answer would be Bongokuhle Hlongwane, and the team did post a clip of him finishing in training and eating an enormous steak, so I’m sold. Yebo!

All I know is that the team had better score some goals tomorrow against Viking FK, or the PANIC buttons will be in use across MNUFC fandom.

In other MNUFC news, it’s kit release day, one of those days that brings out the true cynic in me. I recognize that this is pretty much a sports-wide thing nowadays, to have a new jersey every year. It just bothers me that every year there’s an expectation that you give monopolist behemoth Fanatics a huge wodge of cash for the newest thing.

If it cost $20, I’d be on board. But then again, my most deep-seated and heartfelt belief is that absolutely nothing should cost more than $20.

MLS as a whole has been dumping a few new kits every day, and my favorite thing is that they all have faintly meaningless names. Vancouver: “The Hoop x This City Kit.” LA Galaxy: “City of Dreams” kit.

The very best part is that Colorado, a team that gives every impression that they have forgotten to sign any players or remember which city their stadium is in (yes, except when they win the Western Conference, it’s confusing), does not seem to have bothered to name their kit, which is referred to just as “2022 club jersey.” Just perfectly on brand for them.

I’m sure this year’s MNUFC jersey will look cool. I’m hopeful that it will have the wing from the NASL days, which last year’s jersey did. But I can’t help but be a grump about how much it costs.

This has been the “everybody’s dad grumbles about the price of things these days” section of the blog.

Reading material:

• Minnesota United’s goal-scoring problems continue in scoreless draw with Real Salt Lake - Jerry Zgoda, Star Tribune
• Loons sign Honduran midfielder Kervin Arriaga to two-year contract - Andy Greder, Pioneer Press
• Minnesota United acquires Honduras national team midfielder Kervin Arriaga - Jerry Zgoda, Star Tribune