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.

Tuesday’s biggest news was the official signing of goalkeeper Eric Dick, who the Loons thought highly enough of that they spent a Re-Entry Draft pick on him in order to grab his negotiating rights.

Dick is 27, and has mostly been a USL backup for four years, though he did play one (sadly disastrous) game for Sporting KC in 2019. At 6’5”, size may be his greatest asset; he was an All-American at Butler in 2017, and was SKC’s first-round draft pick that offseason, but since then he’s only managed to grab 30 starts across four seasons on loan in the USL.

All in all, he’s got the classic third-keeper makeup. In fact, he could be a double for the Loons’ 2021 third keeper, Adrian Zendejas, who was also mostly a USL backup (for six years), and also played one game for Sporting KC in 2019.

For the moment, he is a bit between a rock and a hard place. The Loons have two experienced goalkeepers in front of him, in Tyler Miller and Dayne St. Clair. They also have a homegrown keeper, Fred Emmings, who is desperately in need of game time, and who you would have to think is going to get most of the games in goal for MNUFC2 this season.

Which would leave Dick to set out cones and generally be a good teammate and work hard in training.

But. But. MNUFC play-by-play guy Callum Williams, who’s pretty plugged in to all things Loons, has said repeatedly that he expects either Miller or St. Clair to leave before this season begins. St. Clair is signed for at least three more years plus a team option, Miller for just one more plus a team option. Miller is 28, St. Clair is 24.

So who will it be? Miller was first-choice in 2020, then got hurt, and St. Clair came in and saved the Loons’ bacon down the stretch, nearly pushing them all the way to MLS Cup. That earned him the starting spot come 2021, but when the team face-planted out of the starting gate, losing four in a row and giving up ten goals, St. Clair took the fall. Miller never relinquished his spot, starting the next 30 games.

Of course, then Miller got Covid and missed the playoff game, and St. Clair came in and gave up three more goals, giving him the ugly stat line of 13 goals allowed in five games.

And so the Loons have two keepers who are, potentially, their first-choice keeper. Unless you assume that one is going to get hurt - or that you need to hold onto a scapegoat for another face-plant - that’s too many first-choice keepers.

Which is why you could potentially expect one of them to depart. And if that happens, then Eric Dick is one strained hip flexor away from being the man for MNUFC.

You hope that the Loons have the scouting right on this one, because suddenly this signing seems a lot more important than just a keeper-depth kind of thing.

Jerry Zgoda with the Star Tribune has your training report from Tuesday. Near as I can tell, it boils down to “if a player occupies an international slot on the roster, for one reason or another, he is not yet in training.”

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.

Remember the first month of the pandemic in 2020, when Americans all learned about supply chain shortages, through the medium of toilet paper? We definitely took toilet paper for granted. We didn’t think it was possible to run out of toilet paper. And so when there was a shortage, we vowed that when the time came, we’d stock up forever, and we’d never get caught short again.

Remember when Minnesota United ran out of forwards last year? Franco Fragapane got hurt, then Robin Lod and Niko Hansen got hurt at the same time, and then Juan Agudelo and Justin McMaster went down too.

Minnesota United definitely took forwards for granted. They didn’t think it was possible to run out of forwards. And so they clearly vowed that when the time came, they’d stock up forever, and they’d never get caught short again.

Yesterday, MNUFC announced that they were reuniting with forward Abu Danladi, who they picked first in the 2017 MLS SuperDraft but later lost in to Nashville in the expansion draft prior to the 2020 season. Jerry Zgoda from the Star Tribune also says they’re close to finalizing Luis Amarilla’s return, as well.

The Loons have played with a front three for years. Here is the current list of players that can play across that front three.

1. Adrien Hunou
2. Robin Lod
3. Franco Fragapane
4. Luis Amarilla
5. Bongokuhle Hlongwane
6. Abu Danladi
7. Niko Hansen
8. Tani Oluwaseyi (drafted, not yet signed)
9. Aziel Jackson
10. Justin McMaster
11. Thomas Williamson (signed to MNUFC2)

That’s a lot of guys! Even if you assume that Oluwaseyi and Jackson and McMaster, and for all I know Hlongwane too, are also slated for MNUFC2, you still begin to wonder if there’s enough minutes there for everyone.

One of the specific things I’m wondering about is the plan for Hunou this year. The Frenchman was in a weird spot last year, having to acclimate to a new country and a new league, all while suddenly having virtually the entire scoring burden thrust upon him as everyone else got hurt.

He made 22 starts, had trouble finishing his chances (seven goals on 10.2 xG), and only completed a full 90 minutes twice, which is not the kind of production the Loons needed out of their Designated Player number 9. But he was plowing through the end of what was effectively a 15-month season, having come over near the end of the French season, and was trying to adapt on the fly to a league which is famously difficult to adapt to.

So maybe we just need to cut him some slack.

Where do the Loons see him? They can’t really afford to not play him. But at the same time, the tandem of Amarilla and Danladi would have, as recently as two years ago, been sufficient as the entire plan at striker. Having Hunou AND Amarilla AND Danladi seems like overkill.

But you run out of toilet paper once, and suddenly having too much doesn’t seem like too much of a problem.

My notes have 27 guys signed to the first-team roster for next year, and here’s how that breaks down by position (4-2-1-3 for clarity’s sake):

GK: 3 - Miller, St. Clair, Emmings

DF: 8 - Boxall, Dibassy, Métanire, Gasper, Kallman, Montgomery, Kibunguchy, Taylor

MF: 4 - Trapp, Dotson, Rosales, Hayes

10: 1 - Reynoso

FW: 11 (the above plus Patrick Weah, who’s out with an ACL injury)

There’s almost certainly some sliding and moving that will happen with this roster and MNUFC2 (assuming that this is a thing). For example, Heath is on record as wanting to bring in a young center back and a fullback that can play either side.

That can’t bode well for Montgomery, Kibunguchy, and Taylor - two young center backs and a fullback that can play either side.

Overall, the roster still seems short in the midfield.

I assume that today, MNUFC will announce that Ramón Ábila, Ángelo Rodríguez, Mason Toye, and Christian Ramirez are all part of this year’s squad. Stocking up!

Trying to divine the setup of an MLS roster can drive a strong man mad. The 2022 MNUFC roster, even in its partially formed state, is no different.

By my count, MNUFC has a designated player spot and perhaps four other senior roster spots open, at the moment. They may well not fill two of those, to retain some flexibility - for example, they needed an open spot last year to sign Fanendo Adi in mid-season.

Let’s assume that the rumors are true and that Luis Amarilla is returning to the Loons. Amarilla signed in 2020, promised 25 goals, got hurt and missed most of the year, then couldn’t come to an agreement to return in 2021. He’d be welcome back in Minnesota. He’d also be, by my count, the ninth international player on the roster, assuming that draftee Tani Oluwaseyi - who is Nigerian by way of Canada - is also signed.

Note: this also assumes that Robin Lod, who was trying to get a green card last year, did get one - and that Romain Métanire, who was also trying but is still listed as an international on the roster, didn’t.

That’s too many. You can’t have more than eight internationals. You can buy an international spot from another team, but as yet, MNUFC hasn’t done this.

But maybe someone else got a green card! The online roster isn’t updated, probably.

Also this talk about roster spots is making some assumptions about who is and is not on the senior roster (that’s spots 1-20), versus on the supplemental roster (spots 21-30). For example, Dayne St. Clair was on the supplemental roster last year, but signed a new deal in the offseason and also - if I’m reading the rules right - aged out of eligibility to be on the supplemental roster. Same goes for Chase Gasper and Hassani Dotson.

The roster doesn’t reflect any of that. Which could mean it’s not updated, and could also mean that I’m completely wrong.

And also, I have absolutely no idea how MNUFC2 is going to affect this. The Loons signed Thomas Williamson, who was San Jose’s first-round pick last year, to the MNUFC2 roster for 2022, when in past years he would have been exactly the type of player that they’d put on the supplemental roster.

Does MNUFC2 effectively give the Loons an extra 18 or 20 supplemental roster spots? Can Oluwaseyi, or guys like Callum Montgomery and Nabi Kibunguchy who have been on loan in the past, simply be part of the MNUFC2 roster instead of the first-team roster?

I guess what I’m saying is that, before the season begins next month, the Loons are likely to bring in anywhere between two and twenty-two new players.

Both Andy Greder and Jerry Zgoda quoted Heath on Monday suggesting that, apart from Amarilla, the Loons were looking to add a young center back and a fullback to the roster.

If I was DJ Taylor (six starts at fullback last year), or Montgomery or Kibunguchy (both young center backs who were on loan last year), I don’t think I would have enjoyed hearing that from my coach.

Midfield has to be a priority, too. The Loons had four players to man the middle of the team’s 4-2-1-3, and lost two of them this offseason, with Ozzie Alonso going to Atlanta and Ján Greguš headed to San Jose. They have Jacori Hayes and youngster Joseph Rosales as cover, but surely they’ll want someone else as well.

It apparently won’t be Thomás Chacón, who seems to be on the way out of the club. Perhaps Rosales has been earmarked for a bigger role than expected.

With preseason beginning next week, we’re starting to get some answers on the Loons roster.

Lastly, Connor Fleming from The18.com put together a list of the greatest hits from South African fans on MNUFC’s Facebook page, following the signing of Bongokuhle Hlongwane. It’s truly hilarious, but also should strengthen the resolve of all Loons fans to take care of South Africa’s beautiful son.

I watched some of the eMLS last night, and let me tell you: I did not understand how eMLS works.

I assumed that signing up to play for an eMLS team meant that you had to play with the associated team in your FIFA games, but that is not the case. The Loons were wearing the Loons jerseys, but that was pretty much the end of the similarities.

Anyway, Ronaldo had a hat-trick for the Loons in the game I watched - not Cristiano Ronaldo, the Brazilian one from twenty years ago - with most of them assisted by Neymar or Kylian Mbappé.

So not only is there a fantasy component, there is time travel as well.

MNUFC’s eMLS player, a guy named Ehsan “Lamps” Zakeri, kept saying he was having trouble with his game lagging, but you couldn’t tell from how much he dominated. Lamps in eMLS »> Lamps for NYCFC?

In news that makes me sound less like a senior citizen, MNUFC made one selection in the 2022 MLS Superdraft, taking striker Tani Oluwaseyi from St. John’s University with the 17th pick.

It’s the third time in six years that the Loons have spent their top pick on a toolsy forward, and the others didn’t work out that well. Abu Danladi, the top pick in the 2017 draft, was mostly a bust; he had eight goals in 2017 but injuries and other struggles derailed his career afterwards.

A year later, the Loons took Mason Toye, who showed flashes - enough, at least, for the Loons to send him to Montreal late in the 2020 season, in exchange for a fair chunk of cash. Toye still may come through and be a success, but it won’t be for the Loons.

David Gass, who covers Big East soccer and also regularly appears on the MLS Extratime podcast, was high on Oluwaseyi, and thinks he can challenge for a roster spot and be a contributor in MLS in 2022, so that’s a positive note.

Plus, just yesterday I was writing about how MNUFC2 will provide opportunities for young players who need games, and here we are already and MNUFC has a young player who might need some games! The system works.

The depth chart for the front three is starting to look interesting. Beyond Adrien Hunou, Franco Fragapane, and Robin Lod, the team now has added Bongokuhle Hlongwane and Oluwaseyi. Niko Hansen, Aziel Jackson, and Justin McMaster are holdovers from last year, too.

There are options, at least. And given that last year at one point the Loons were down to “maybe Hassani Dotson can play wing” and “maybe Fanendo Adi has something left in the tank,” options are what they needed.

Also, in preseason news, Adrian Heath had an Emanuel Reynoso update in his draft press conference:

In a draft-day media call just now, #MNUFC's Adrian Heath said Emanuel Reynoso "for sure" will be in Blaine for training next week. He wouldn't comment further, other than to say club is working with MLS to review allegations made after he was arrested in Argentina last month.

— Jerry Zgoda (@JerryZgoda) January 11, 2022

There was lots more from the presser, so I advise you to read Jerry Zgoda’s notebook in the Star Tribune, or Andy Greder’s notebook in the Pioneer Press, or - ideally, of course - both.

Major League Soccer is launching its own developmental league this year, which they’re calling MLS NEXT Pro. It’ll have 23 teams this year, 22 of which are MLS-affiliated teams, plus an independent team in Rochester, NY. For Loons fans, the important thing is that for the first time, MNUFC will have its very own developmental squad, called - inevitably - MNUFC2.

When this was first announced, the consensus on Twitter was that the team should be called MN2FC, the Toonies (after the Canadian two-dollar coin), or the Doubloons.

Friday, the team held a press conference with MNUFC2 coach Cameron Knowles, who was a video coach with the Loons last year, and prior to that was the head man with Portland Timbers 2 in the USL Championship. Jerry Zgoda sums it up here for the Star Tribune, and Knowles said nothing unexpected.

The gist is that MNUFC2 will be a little bit like every level of minor league baseball, all rolled into one. It’ll be a spot for MNUFC first-team players that aren’t playing much to get a few games - in that way, it’ll be like a Triple-A team. It’ll be a spot for young, developing players to establish themselves as pros, like a Double-A team. And it’ll be a place for really young players - academy age, like late teens - to test themselves at a higher level, like Single-A or rookie ball.

As such, like in any minor league, the priorities for MNUFC2 will be a little bit skewed from what they might be otherwise, because the goal is to develop players while also winning as much as possible. It’ll be the same as it is for Wild fans checking on AHL Iowa’s results, or Twins fans looking at the St. Paul Saints boxscore - less about whether Iowa or St. Paul won, more about whether Marco Rossi scored or whether Jose Miranda got three hits.

Knowles didn’t know where the team will play, when the season will start, or how long the season will be; he said he’d been told that they were looking at a 24-game season beginning in late March, but noted that it was subject to change.

It feels like this is really the most significant re-shaping of the lower-division soccer landscape we’ve seen in the past few years, certainly the biggest change since the NASL (version 2) finally capsized. One of the odd things about the USL over the past few years has been the presence of MLS affiliate teams, whose incentives didn’t always line up with the traditional incentive of “winning soccer games.”

The MLS SuperDraft is today, and the Loons have the 17th pick, which honestly is kind of low to get a real difference-maker. As opposed to past years, though, Minnesota does now have a landing spot for their draft pick. Andy Greder notes that they don’t have other picks, and says that they aren’t planning to make any other deals.

Also, a hat tip to Brian Quarstad for this tidbit, which suggest that the Loons are signing striker Thomas Williamson, who was San Jose’s first-rounder last year. Again, if this move came in the pre-MNUFC2 era, it would make no sense; now it makes a lot of sense.

Perhaps it won’t be long until we can start putting together our own yearly version of Aaron Gleeman’s yearly Top 40 Twins Prospects ranking. For a club that’s always been about the here and now, it’s kind of exciting to think about the future, too.