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

Pitchers and catchers did not report to spring training yesterday. Nor do pitchers and catchers seem like they’re going to report any time soon. Major League Baseball locked out its players earlier this offseason, and the owners and players seem very, very far from coming to any kind of collective bargaining agreement. So far, the themes seem to be that A) the owners will not rest until they have extracted every last concession from the players that they can possibly think of, B) the players are extremely angry at the owners for attempting to nickel-and-dime them during a period of expanding revenues, and C) neither side seems particularly concerned that fans may leave and never come back, even though all the signs seem to be pointing in that direction.

So it seems like baseball is on the verge of eating itself, although this was also said of baseball in 1994 and hockey in 2005, and here we are today, and both are doing fine. At any rate, this is not my question. My question is this: if baseball doesn’t get it together, is this going to be a breakout summer for NWSL and MLS?

20 MLB teams have an MLS team in their home market (assuming you count the entire Bay Area as one market). Ten have an NWSL team. If there is no baseball, suddenly there are a lot of entertainment dollars to spend and TV hours and newspaper column inches to fill in those 20 cities.

I recognize that baseball and soccer are not perfect substitutes for each other; Twins fans aren’t necessarily going to shrug their shoulders and swap baseball gloves for soccer scarves and become Loons die-hards. Some of them will migrate to golf courses and fishing boats, not Allianz Field, and others will just find anything else to do with their time and money.

But still, there are a lot of people just looking for something to do in the summer, especially here, where we’re mostly stuck inside our homes for five months in the winter. And there’s only so much time that the local media can spend writing about the NFL Draft before they have to find something else to talk about. We’re lucky here, in that we have both the Lynx and MNUFC (and now MNUFC2 and Minnesota Aurora FC and new USL League Two members Minneapolis City, to cover all my local soccer bases).

I’m not talking about attendance here. The Loons fill their stadium anyway, and they’ll continue to do that, MLB lockout or no MLB lockout. But I think the battle for interest and attention are harder to win. The typical Allianz Field ticketholder (outside of the people that stand in the Wonderwall) seems to have a lot in common with the typical person in the stands at CHS Field, watching the St. Paul Saints. They’re interested and they want the team to win, but their level of interest is not the same as the typical Vikings or Timberwolves fan in the stands.

They are not the ones reading my blogs about the merits of the MLS salary cap, in other words.

Attendance, and interest and attention, are obviously correlated, but I think that correlation is weaker than people assume. I think we’ve seen that a lot in soccer in the United States. For years, the soccer refrain was “get people to come once (usually via free or heavily discounted ticket deals) and they’ll keep coming back.”

And it did result in people who wanted to come back - as long as the tickets were still free or heavily discounted.

Getting them to watch the team when they’re not in the stands, to read about them in the media and care about their off-season moves and just generally follow the team - is a lot harder than just getting butts into seats.

I’m not saying that increased MLS and NWSL attention is a natural result of an MLB lockout. It seems equally likely that not having the Twins to discuss won’t mean that soccer gets one iota more of attention, from the media or anyone else. The same goes for the WNBA, which has been around almost as long as MLS, and longer than any of the top-level women’s soccer leagues in the USA. If the media hasn’t covered them yet, there’s no definitive reason that a lack of baseball will be the thing to flip the switch.

All I’m saying is that it’s possible.

Reading material:

• Each MLS team’s breakout player candidate in 2022 - Matthew Doyle, MLSSoccer.com. I won’t give his Loons pick away other than to say it’s someone that I’ve written about a lot this year.

Last week I wrote about the questions the Loons needed to answer during their preseason tournament in Portland, so we might as well start with those five topics, following MNUFC’s 1-0 loss to Portland in the team’s first televised game of the 2022 preseason.

Topic #1: Goalkeeping. Tyler Miller started in goal and Dayne St. Clair wasn’t even on the bench, so that (temporarily) settled the question of who’ll be the keeper for this team. I think we can all rest assured that if only one of them is available, the other one will absolutely be the starter.

Topic #2: The front three. Abu Danladi started up front. On the one hand, this is not notable, since Danladi is the team’s only striker that’s been in camp for the entire preseason, and the coaching staff has been raving about how prepared he is. On the other hand, it feels like a signal that the job is up for grabs, and isn’t guaranteed to Adrien Hunou or anyone else.

That’s not totally true elsewhere on the field; for example, Robin Lod was a late arrival, but started at right wing. Once Luis Amarilla arrives, you can absolutely see Adrian Heath swapping out strikers as the season goes along, depending on who’s playing well and who’s not playing well.

It’s a luxury that Heath didn’t have last year. For much of the season, he had Hunou and the not-exactly-in-form Fanendo Adi, so it’s no wonder he stuck with Hunou all year and did his best to try to build him up. This year, if Hunou’s not producing, Heath has options. That’s good for the team, and certainly a sign that Hunou will have to settle in and earn his minutes this year.

Topic #3: Right back. Romain Métanire started the game at right back, which was a surprise, and for 30 minutes I figured that the question of whether Métanire was healthy was therefore a settled issue. Then Métanire sat down on the field and headed straight for the bench when the ball went out of play, so like everyone else, I assumed the question was still settled, but in the other direction: no, obviously he is not healthy, he couldn’t even last 45 minutes. Then Heath said postgame that he wasn’t hurt after all, just not over-extending himself.

So Romain Métanire’s health is now, if anything, an even more confusing question.

Topic #4: Winger defense? I put a note in that Friday blog, questioning whether anyone will actually track back on defense, but as I was watching on Sunday, I realized that the question really boils down to whether Franco Fragapane will track back. The Loons usually seem to drop into a 4-4-2 when the other team has the ball, with the striker and Reynoso in the opposition half. Lod isn’t exactly Mr. Defense either, but Fragapane is more likely to get caught upfield, or to lose the ball in his own half. It’s something to keep an eye on as the season progresses.

Topic #5: Hassani Dotson. I refuse to draw any conclusions after one preseason game. Watching him, there’s just a lot of responsbility on the role that he’s being asked to play. When the Loons are passing out of the back, Wil Trapp will be the one that drops in between the center backs, and Dotson is going to be the one that’s in front of Trapp in the center, and there’s a lot of skill required in that role, to get the ball from Trapp or a center back and then make a good pass to get the attack started. With the Loons, the default option is always “turn around and find Reynoso,” but there’s obviously more to it than that, and it’s maybe the key pass in the Loons offense other than any magic that Reynoso comes up with.

So to do that, and to defend in transition (which was more important on Sunday, giving the counter-heavy setup the Timbers love), and to try to win the ball in the center of the Loons defense… that’s just a lot. Heath and company have consistently said that they believe in Dotson, and they backed that up by not making a splashy DP-level midfield signing to replace Ozzie Alonso and Jan Gregus. Watching on Sunday, it feels like more than anything else, Dotson’s development is going to be the key to the early season for the Loons.

Give the brass credit, though, for also signing Kervin Arriaga, another young midfielder who could conceivably fill a similar role. Both he and South African forward Bongokuhle Hlongwane joined the team in Portland, and it sounds like both may well see the field on Wednesday against Real Salt Lake.

As for the macro picture, losing a preseason friendly means absolutely nothing, of course. Aside from the mixup that lead to the Timbers goal, the Minnesota defense did an excellent job of shot prevention, especially in transition; I don’t think Miller ended up making a single save. On offense, the Loons created some excellent chances - especially from set pieces - but couldn’t score, and the only thing bothersome about the not-that-newsworthy statement of “a team in preseason lacks sharpness” is that the story of the entire second half of last season was “the Loons created some excellent chances but couldn’t score.”

I still think the most encouraging thing, though, is that the Loons have options up front this year, in a way they did not during their second-half struggles last year.

Maybe they can score a bunch of goals a friendly against a team that plays with 10 men for 70 minutes, just so last year’s hangover can entirely be worked off.

Recent reading material:

• Two newcomers sit out Loons’ preseason loss in Portland - Jerry Zgoda, Star Tribune
• Minnesota United draftee Nabi Kibunguchy embraces Kenyan heritage - Jerry Zgoda, Star Tribune
• Hassani Dotson ready for next step: Loons’ No. 1 central midfielder - Andy Greder, Pioneer Press

(I’m always on the lookout for new reading material, send on Twitter if you have more.)

Thursday was a travel day for MNUFC, as the Loons’ final leg of their preseason preparations is in Portland. Minnesota will play three games in seven days, two against MLS competition and one against Viking FK of Norway. By the time next Sunday rolls around, we should have a better idea of what this team is going to look like - especially since good sense has finally prevailed, and Loons fans (the ones in Minnesota at least) can watch at least two of the three games.

Among other things, by the times the games kick off, we may have a better idea of who’s officially on the team. Reports have indicated that Kervin Arriaga is finally allowed out of Honduras and can get to the United States to officially sign with MNUFC, though it remains to be seen whether he’ll meet the team in Portland or just train in Minnesota. Questions still remain about Luis Amarilla and Bongokuhle Hlongwane, as well.

In terms of what will be decided on the field, though, here’s the top questions in my mind.

1) Who will start in goal? Despite rumors and expectations, both Tyler Miller and Dayne St. Clair are still on the roster, and now for a second straight year, Minnesota has a decision to make. St. Clair, signed long-term and still young, seems to be the keeper of the future. Miller, who started 30 straight games last year and only missed the playoff game due to Covid, is the incumbent starter. Do the Loons decide it’s time for the youngster to be the man between the sticks? Do they keep Miller, signed for one more year with a team option for the following year, as the steady, safe choice at the back?

2) What will the front three look like? The Loons certainly have plenty of options. Franco Fragapane seems likely to stay at left wing, but beyond him, Minnesota can mix and match. Robin Lod is the returning starter on the right, but at times he’s looked like the team’s best option at striker. Do they dare move him there and give someone else - Niko Hansen, perhaps, or someone like Abu Danladi, a chance on the right? Adrien Hunou ended up being the default choice at striker last season, but if he struggles again, do the Loons dare put their Designated Player striker on the bench and let Luis Amarilla or Danladi or Lod lead the line? Is there somehow a way for Amarilla and Hunou and Lod and Fragapane to all fit into the same att- no, I can’t even keep going with that thought, since none of those guys are going to track back even a little bit. Throw in Emanuel Reynoso and you’d have five guys standing in the opposing six-yard box, idly watching five beleagured teammates defend against ten opponents. Actually, maybe that should be its own question.

3) Will anybody track back even a little bit? Reynoso and Fragapane are amazingly talented offensive players, and a certain amount of energy conservation is expected from offensively creative players. But there were games last year when both refused to do any defensive work at all, especially in the second halves, which put a huge burden on the Minnesota defensive midfield to somehow cover most of the field.

4) Is Romain Métanire healthy? The right back injured his hamstring in the playoffs against Portland, barely three months ago, and the Loons have said consistently that they are “hopeful” he’ll be ready for the beginning of the year. If he plays at all in the Rose City, then maybe he’ll be ready come February 26. Then again, Minnesota’s first few games are in the frigid north, so maybe they’d be better off keeping him out of the deep freezes, especially since they have both Oniel Fisher and DJ Taylor ready to deputize.

5) Will Hassani Dotson get a chance to be the man in central midfield? 2021 wasn’t a lost year for Dotson, exactly, but he certainly never got a chance to make any particular position his own. My notes may be off, but I don’t think he ever started more than three games in a row last year in a particular spot on the field, even though he started 26 times. With Ozzie Alonso and Jan Gregus gone, and Wil Trapp set to be the stay-at-home defensive midfielder, Dotson has a chance to be the ball-carrying link between defense and attack for the Loons.

Starting on Sunday at 2pm, against Portland, we should begin to get some answers about these open questions.

There are lots of hard things that MNUFC has to deal with in the preseason. There’s the soul-sucking Minnesota winter that requires them to either train in a dome, or travel to warmer climates. This year, there’s the challenge of not only supplementing the first team but filling out an entirely new team, MNUFC 2. But particularly, the Loons’ biggest challenge this offseason has seemed to be somewhat more basic: simply getting all of the team’s players into the same physical location.

The whole preseason has been nothing but endless updates on who is, and is not, in training camp. Emanuel Reynoso was a late arriver because of legal problems in Argentina. Hassani Dotson was on paternity leave. Robin Lod had, of all things, military service in Finland. Michael Boxall was on duty with the New Zealand national team.

All of the above are now in camp, though Reynoso is temporarily back in Argentina dealing with a family issue (supposedly this is not related to his legal issues.) But then, there’s a batch of Loons - and putative Loons - that haven’t showed up yet.

One is Bongokuhle Hlongwane, the young South African who’s lit the MNUFC social media homepages aflame, due to the new population of excited South Africans demanding updates on their native son. Hlongwane is still getting visas sorted out, and for a primer on this sort of thing, you can’t do better than a post that immigration lawyer Cory Caouette wrote last year for Twins Daily. There’s a fascinating world out there, of consular posts and embassy approvals, that only soccer and baseball fans ever hear about.

This happens every year with the Twins, where at least one player gets trapped in an infinity loop in a Latin American country and can’t show up for the beginning of spring training, so I guess I’m used to it.

What I also should be used to is drawn-out transfer sagas for the Loons. The club is apparently still hoping that Kervin Arriaga and Luis Amarilla will be here before they leave for Portland on Thursday, but neither one has officially put pen to paper, and they’ve got about 24 hours to do so.

Arriaga is, according to reports, stuck in Honduras until a matter of unpaid child support gets worked out. (This is why he couldn’t travel with the Honduran national team last week.) Amarilla was pictured on social media with Emanuel Reynoso in Argentina, so I guess it’s possible that the reason Reynoso is in Argentina is to sign Amarilla?

Speaking also of Portland, here’s the Loons’ official schedule for the Timbers’ preseason tournament:

• Sunday 2/13: Portland, 2pm
• Wednesday 2/16: Real Salt Lake, 7pm
• Saturday 2/19: Viking FK, 4:30pm

After that, the Loons have a few weeks to get everything (puts finger to ear) okay I’m being told they open the regular season one week after that Viking FK game, 17 days from today.

I read somewhere that at least the first two of these preseason games will have live streams, which feels necessary at this point for no other reason than reminding fans that the Loons actually exist, and that their home opener is (gulp) March 5th.

With all of these late arrivals in mind, let’s take a way-too-early guess at the lineup the Loons will roll out against Philadelphia on March 26.

Dayne St. Clair

Oniel Fisher - Michael Boxall - Bakaye Dibassy - Chase Gasper

Wil Trapp - Hassani Dotson

Abu Danladi - Emanuel Reynoso - Franco Fragapane

Adrien Hunou

Subs in 2nd half: Luis Amarilla, Niko Hansen, Joseph Rosales

The main questions here, I guess, are:

• Who will start at keeper?
• Who will start at right wing?
• Will the Loons keep lining up in a 4-2-3-1 or will they switch it up?

I suspect we will know more after the week in Portland.

I went on vacation for two weeks. It is very clear to me that living in Minnesota rather than in someplace that’s warm in the winter is one of the great foolishnesses of my life. I can only blame my ancestors, who chose to live in Minnesota and thereby anchored each succeeding generation to the previous one, a punishment visited onto the nth generation.

And while I was gone… kind of a lot happened. But not what was happening when I left!

When I left, MNUFC was on the verge of signing both midfielder Kervin Arriaga and striker Luis Amarilla. Now that I’m back, the Loons are… on the verge of signing both Arriaga and Amarilla.

First, let’s talk Arriaga, and frankly I cannot talk Arriaga without playing the following clip.

All your favorites! Arriaga! Arriaga II! Barriaga!

In all seriousness, Arriaga is a 6’3” defensive midfielder for the Honduran national team and for Honduran powerhouse Marathón. His arrival would give the Loons the option of fielding an all-Honduran midfield, with Joseph Rosales already in the midfield fold.

Wise sage Matt Doyle of MLSSoccer.com, writing about each Western Conference team’s worries for 2022, thought that Minnesota’s greatest worry was “who’s going to win the ball?” Without Ozzie Alonso, he notes, the Loons are missing that guy who wins 50-50 balls all over the field.

I’m not sure if Arriaga can be that guy, but here’s a video of him absolutely CONCACAFing things up in the midfield against Panama in December. He’s all over the place, getting in scraps, drawing (and committing) fouls - just like Alonso before him. Maybe this could work!

For me, this signing fills the Loons’ last remaining glaring need. If Arriaga can make it work in the midfield, it also has the effect of helping Minnesota shore up other needs as well, solely because it gives Hassani Dotson the option of filling in elsewhere on the pitch.

We were supposed to see Arriaga in St. Paul when Honduras visited for the CONCACAF Ice Bowl, but he couldn’t get his paperwork in order. According to this report, tweeted by the great Scott Kerssen, he couldn’t leave the country because he hasn’t been paying child support.

Given that one of his teammates got damn hypothermia, maybe it’s just as well he couldn’t make it.

It’s been a banner offseason for translating legalese from Spanish to English, in the MNUFC world.

As for Amarilla, there were a number of reports today that he was done and dusted. But then again, there was also one insane report that said MNUFC was interested in bringing in Carlos Tevez, which is so nonsensical it’s like it was invented by an automated Transfer Rumor Generator bot, so I guess everything should be taken with many grains of salt here.

We already talked about Amarilla and the forward glut, but here’s hoping competition is a good thing for the MNUFC forward line, because it’s looking like there will be plenty of competition.

Speaking of competition, the Loons finally made their move to bring in a veteran fullback, signing 30-year-old Oniel Fisher. He can play either left or right back, and has 78 MLS appearances over the past seven years with Seattle, D.C., and the LA Galaxy. This strikes me as a very solid signing, especially given that Romain Metanire is still recovering from his hamstring injury in the playoffs last year.

MNUFC spent a week or so in Florida, where it was mostly cold and rainy (they should have gone to Arizona with me, it was perfect there.) They played twice, a scoreless draw with Chicago and a 5-4 win against Orlando. Emanuel Reynoso scored from the halfway line, the Loons also got goals from Abu Danladi, Jacori Hayes, Wil Trapp, and triallist Emmanuel Iwe. And Dayne St. Clair saved a penalty.

The Loons trailed 1-0, led 4-1, blew a three-goal lead, and then Iwe scored a late winner. So the crazy is in mid-season form already.

Iwe is kind of a fun story. He went to St. Louis Park, by way of Joy of the People, the local soccer non-profit. He played last year at St. Cloud State, but he’s had trials at Werder Bremen and Deportivo Saprissa, and played for the NPSL’s Joy AC.

MNUFC found him from an open tryout, he’s been training with the team in preseason, and now who knows where he’ll go. Add him to the striker depth chart! TOO MANY IS NEVER ENOUGH!

I was thinking more about the rationale for Minnesota United FC having to get rid of Tyler Miller or Dayne St. Clair. Other than an unselfish desire to do right by the players, both of whom are capable of being starters in MLS, the main reason for trading one of them is “there’s a salary cap in this league and you can’t pay both of them.” So let’s talk about that MLS salary cap.

The first thing to know about the salary cap in MLS is that the number is essentially meaningless. Last year the salary cap was $4.9 million, but every single team in the league paid more than that in salaries. MLS doesn’t even refer to it as a cap; they call it the “salary budget.”

Some things count against the budget in a way that doesn’t actually match the reality of paychecks. Designated Players count as $612,500 against the budget, even if they get paid $40 million a year; younger designated players count even less. Homegrown players can have paychecks that don’t match their budget charge. U-22 players can have paychecks that don’t match their budget charge.

And then there is the concept of Allocation Money, which is extra mystery money in each club’s budget, that can be earned in various ways and traded between teams.

You will absolutely scramble your brain if you try to understand all of these rules. And even if you do manage to get a handle on it, it won’t actually matter because salary budget matters are a closely guarded league secret.

The only reason I can say something like “every team in the league paid more than the salary cap last year” is because the MLS Players Association releases a list of player salaries twice a year, ostensibly to help provide transparency. This is helpful but feels imperfect; the only time I recall someone asking MNUFC manager Adrian Heath about these numbers last year, the only thing he said was along the lines of “some of those numbers are way, way off.” Which is not entirely encouraging, transparency-wise.

But even if those numbers were perfect, you wouldn’t be able to assemble a clear picture of any team’s cap situation, thanks to the mysterious elixir of Allocation Money. The league comes right out and says in its roster rules, “To protect the interests of MLS and its clubs during discussions with prospective players or clubs in other leagues, amounts of Allocation Money currently held by each club will not be shared publicly.”

From a business perspective, this makes perfect sense. From the perspective of the soccer blogger, who’d like to dive into the numbers and write intelligently about the constraints that Minnesota United is operating with as they try to bring in new players and keep their current players, it pretty much makes things impossible.

Check out CapFriendly.com’s Minnesota Wild page. Down to the dollar, it tells you what kind of situation Minnesota’s in, cap-wise. As I’ve written before, this kind of detail is crucial to understanding why the Wild are doing what they’re doing, which I find interesting even if it doesn’t increase my enjoyment of the NHL itself.

If you want to do this for MLS, you can look at the compiled list of MLSPA information, which mostly tends to make you think that salaries don’t matter in MLS. According to those numbers, from Sporting KC blog The Blue Testament, the four lowest-paid teams in MLS last year made the playoffs; four of the five highest-paid teams didn’t.

As I said, though, there’s no telling how accurate those numbers are; I certainly don’t trust them as much as I would trust the numbers that are readily available for other sports.

(As an aside, the one thing that is always remarkable to me about the MLSPA data is that the public reaction tends to be “can you believe that Player X is making Salary Y, he’s so overpaid.” To me, the interesting thing is that more than a third of MLS players are making five figures, and almost 80% make less than the minimum salary in the traditional big four pro sports in this country [MLB - $570,500].)

Rather than get into cap minutae, then, MLS teams tend to be judged by whether they’re taking proper advantage of all of the exceptions to the budget. The quick shorthand to MLS orthodoxy, using available information about roster spots and players, goes something like this:

1. Is a team using all of its Designated Player spots? This is used as a shorthand for team payroll, since the easiest way to exceed that salary budget is through those potential three big contracts.
2. Is a team’s academy producing first-team talent? This is used as shorthand for what nearly everyone considers Good Soccer Behavior, outside of the Euro Super League teams: developing young players, getting them to their highest potential level of competition, and using this development to help fund the entire operation.
3. Is a team using all three of its U-22 Initiative spots, or if not using them, at least has them available (through either not having a third DP, or paying that DP a low enough salary)? This is used as a shorthand for whether a team can scout, can plan ahead, and is trying to embrace the new hotness in MLS - developing young players and selling them to rich teams from Europe or Brazil.

By this measure, MNUFC is right in the middle of the pack, maybe closer to the bottom middle. They currently have two DPs, Adrien Hunou and Emanuel Reynoso. They currently have two U-22 Initiative players, though Bongokuhle Hlongwane hasn’t officially arrived, and Thomas Chacón seems to be on the way out the door. But they don’t have an academy, and have few players coming through their homegrown pipeline.

And as for payroll and salary cap issues, they may not be able to afford two front-line goalkeepers. But honestly, your guess is as good as mine.

Vancouver might need a keeper now, and New England might be in the market as well. So if nothing else, there’s always a chance that the Loons could end up with one fewer keeper - but a little more mystery money.