It took us awhile to get to sports this week, mostly because Clarence was reminding Brandon of the difficulties of having two kids at once. Download now, if you will.

In a Q&A for Sunday’s newspaper, the Star Tribune’s Michael Rand spoke with Minnesota Vikings vice president Lester Bagely about the team’s future with Major League Soccer, among other subjects.

Though the Vikings have long mentioned their interest in the league, Bagely’s statement was the team’s strongest yet on the subject of soccer. For more, head over to SoccerCentric.

You can read my recap of United’s 0-0 draw with Carolina at startribune.com, or in Sunday’s paper.

I wrote a feature for Saturday’s Star Tribune about Christian Ramirez. You can read it here, and my preview box for the game here.

I’ve been telling my brother Dave that he was our standby emergency podcast guest. Last night, that came to fruition. Thanks, Dave!

Minnesota’s path to the US Open Cup, at least for the first two rounds, is now set – and the path involves two trips away from home.

United will face the Des Moines Menace next Wednesday, May 28, at 7:30pm, at the Menace’s home in West Des Moines. Should Minnesota beat the fourth-division Menace – something they couldn’t accomplish last season, let’s remember – they will travel to Sporting Kansas City in mid-June for the next round, playing the MLS side at 7:30pm on Wednesday, June 18 at Sporting Park.

There was some confusion about the fourth-round game in Kansas City, at least from a Minnesota standpoint. With both MLS and the NASL taking a break in June for the beginning of the World Cup, neither Minnesota nor Kansas City has a game scheduled for the weekend of June 14 – an attractive proposition for Minnesota fans who were hoping to make the trip south for the potential fourth-round tie. Instead, the game is scheduled for the following Wednesday night.

I talked to Chris Wyche, Sporting KC’s executive vice president of stadium operations, to get some clarification on why the game is happening on a Wednesday. It turns out there are two reasons; for one, while Minnesota doesn’t have a game scheduled that weekend, Des Moines does. While KC might have liked to have the game on a Saturday, they also want to start selling tickets – and would prefer to sell those tickets for a set date, rather than have the game depend on which opponent they might play.

Last season, KC drew more than 15,000 fans for a Tuesday-night game against Des Moines in the same competition, so clearly playing on a weeknight is not too much of a concern for the team, from a ticket-sales standpoint.

KC is also entirely replacing the field at Sporting Park, beginning on June 2, in order to change the type of grass in the field to a strain that will better survive the hot and humid East Kansas summer. The US Open Cup game will be the first to take place on the new field, and having the game on June 18 rather than June 14 will give the field an extra four days to take root. Combine the two reasons, and it makes perfect sense that the game would be on June 18.

First, though, is next week’s game in Des Moines – which as mentioned, is not necessarily a foregone conclusion. United also has the spring season to worry about, with games on the Saturdays on either side of the Wednesday trip to Iowa.

Interestingly, the Menace also have games on both weekends that bookend the US Open Cup match – with the second taking place against United’s reserve team. If the main squad can’t beat the Menace on Wednesday, perhaps the reserves can do the job the following weekend.

NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric.

Premier League champions Manchester City will play in Minnesota this summer, taking on Olympiakos at TCF Bank Stadium on August 2nd – but they won’t be the first Premier League team to visit our state this year.

Swansea City, 12th in England’s (and Wales’s) top division this year, will take on Minnesota United at the National Sports Center on July 19, as part of a preseason tour that will see them train for two weeks in Chicago, and play Mexican side Chivas Guadalajara in Milwaukee.

A 7:00pm kickoff is planned, and tickets – which will no doubt be in short supply – will go on sale to United season ticket holders before they are available to the general public.

“To be the first club in Minnesota history to host a match against a team from the Barclay’s Premier League is a thrill and an honor,” said United team president Nick Rogers in a press release.

Said Swansea manager Garry Monk in the same release, “I’ve heard positive things about Minnesota United FC,” said Swansea manager Garry Monk. “They are a great organization with a strong ownership group and are doing exciting things with their club. I know they traveled to England during their preseason, stayed at St. George’s Park and faced clubs like Derby County.”

This is, without a doubt, the biggest exhibition game ever planned for a Minnesota pro soccer team, topping the 2007 matchup with a David Beckham-led Los Angeles Galaxy side, and a 2008 friendly between the Thunder and Burnley, who were at that time in England’s second division. Swansea will be the first Premier League team to visit Minnesota, and Minnesota will be the first NASL club to host a Premier League team.

The match poses an interesting conundrum for United coach Manny Lagos. No doubt most of the team will want a chance to take the field against Swansea, but the team plays Carolina in a regular league game on Thursday night, two days prior to the match. Will Lagos be willing to risk players twice in three days, especially smack dab in the middle of the league season?

Regardless of coaching problems, one thing is for certain: an exciting summer for soccer fans in Minnesota just got a little more exciting.

Update: The below appeared at SoccerCentric.

As David La Vaque wrote this morning, Premier League side Swansea City will play United on July 19 at the National Sports Center in Blaine. Be sure to read that article; he talks to team president Nick Rogers about the connection between this visit and United’s training trip to England, and whether this has any meaning for the future of MLS for the franchise.

A couple of other notes:

*The only two previous exhibitions that are comparable to this game (at least in the modern era – I can’t speak for the Kicks / Strikers era) are two from back when Minnesota’s pro soccer team was called the Thunder. In late 2007, a David Beckham-led Los Angeles Galaxy played the Thunder in the Metrodome. The following summer, Burnley – then in the English second division, though they will be in the Premier League next year – visited for a similar summertime exhibition at the NSC.

The Galaxy match drew more than 20,000 fans, a number that  – given the NSC’s capacity of around 7,500 – this Swansea match can’t hope to approach. In my opinion, though, despite Beckham’s star power, having a Premier League side come to Minnesota is a much, much bigger deal.

The Burnley match in 2008 drew 6,000 or so fans to the NSC; I have no idea what the team announced for attendance, but I was there in the stands. Plus, a good third of those fans were youth teams, in town for the USA Cup soccer tournament.

This match is also during the USA Cup, so I imagine there will be plenty of kids – but I would also be completely shocked if the match didn’t sell out.

*It’s worth noting that this match does not fall into the NASL’s summer break. In fact, United has a game the previous Thursday night, against Carolina at the NSC.

It poses an interesting conundrum for head coach Manny Lagos. I have little doubt that he’ll put the league match first, especially if United fails to win the first half of the season and is still in the playoff race. That said, will he want to risk some of his most important players by playing them twice in three days? Will he be willing to play some of his older veterans in that short time frame? Will the players, all of whom get extremely excited for these types of matches, look past Thursday’s match in anticipation of Saturday?

*There’s no doubt that the most excited person in the metro today is Star Tribune columnist Patrick Reusse, who announced last month that he is now a hardcore Swansea City fan. Reusse made the decision, having grown sick of the Twins’ bullpen management, after careful thought and consultation with radio partner Judd Zulgad, and now his decision is already paying off.

Tonight, Minnesota United will find out its opponent in the team’s first match of the US Open Cup. The Des Moines Menace and Real Colorado Foxes, two teams from the fourth-division Premier Development League, play tonight in Des Moines. If Des Moines wins, United will travel to Iowa on May 28th; if Colorado wins, Minnesota will host the Foxes on the same day.

A third-round game against Des Moines would be a rematch from last year, when Minnesota hit one of the low points of their season by losing to the Menace 1-0 at home, a game so bad that both head coach Manny Lagos and team president Nick Rogers publicly apologized to fans afterwards.

The real prize remains a win in the third round, as it means that United would be matched up against an MLS side. US Soccer is pairing the teams geographically, meaning that – depending on the teams left at that point – Minnesota would almost certainly play Kansas City, Chicago, or Salt Lake in the fourth round.

It’s worth remembering that, to the guys on the field, games against MLS teams are probably only second in importance to playoff games. This is especially true for American players, who feel a great need to prove themselves against the first-division teams that have turned them down.

MLS, like the NASL, is taking a break during the beginning of the World Cup in June – offering the opportunity for clubs to play US Open Cup games on the open weekends. The fourth round would likely be the weekend of June 14 and 15. If Minnesota is drawn for a home game in the fourth round, it will also give United a chance to play another summertime game, and given that the team’s attendance dramatically increases in the summer month, there’s no doubt that the front office is crossing its collective fingers for this to happen.

*NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric. *

United made three changes to the starting lineup for last Saturday’s game against Indy – two of which were on the wing. Jamie Watson and Omar Daley started the first three games wide in midfield, but come kickoff against Indy, Simone Bracalello **was wide left and **Daniel Mendes was wide right.

Combine this with a slight shift in formation, as Bill MK noted in his tactics post this week, and it gave United a much different look. And it’s hard to argue that it worked: Bracalello set up two goals, one of which Mendes scored.

This is not to dump on Watson and Daley, who provide different qualities than do Bracalello and Mendes. Daley bases much of his game on his speed, while Mendes is more about positioning and passing. On the left, Watson’s strengths lie in making runs off the ball and beginning attacks in the middle third of the field, while Bracalello is much better at taking the ball wide, or driving to the end line and finding space to cross the ball – or cutting inside and shooting.

Following the win, Mendes explained United’s approach on the wing. “We start everybody wide,” he said, noting that this width is the main goal in the team’s system.  “From there, we try to make space for each other. We trained a lot this week in how we can be better in the running to give space to the other player.”

Mendes, who has played as both a winger and a playmaking central midfielder in his career, focused on combining with players in the center and with Kevin Venegas, who was the fullback on the right side. “It’s a little different to play wing than as a number ten, because as number ten we have more space to move left and right and go forward and back to meet the ball,” he said.

For head coach** Manny Lagos**, it was natural to put Mendes out on the wing, in his first start for Minnesota. “He’s played there before, he’s played underneath, he’s played that false nine as well,” said Lagos. “He’s one of those interesting players, where the last seven or eight years of his career, he’s been asked to do a lot of different things for his club in Sweden. He’s very comfortable stepping on the field and giving the team something they need. He made great runs from the outside to in, and probably should have had another goal in the second half. I’m just really pleased with him scoring a goal in his first home game.”

On the left, meanwhile, Bracalello continued his run of early-season success. While he’ll go down on the scoresheet with just one assist (and an own goal) to his credit, it was his counter-attacking runs that created both of United’s first two goals. He is United’s most skilled player with the ball at his feet, which leads to offensive chances even when the opposition appears to have him well covered.

While those two goals were created on the counter-attack, it was Bracalello’s combinations with Miguel Ibarra, who played his usual far-roaming attacking midfield role, that particularly impressed Lagos – who noted that this combination opened up Mendes’s goal.

Overall, Lagos was happy with the changes to the lineup. “We made some changes this week and we got some guys on the field that we felt like would do a good job,” he said. “I thought both sides at times, if they came at us we’d have space to attack on both the left and right flanks. When we were smart about it, we really exploited some areas where the space was left for [the wingers] going forward. Certainly with the personnel changes I was very proud of how Simone came in and influenced the game offensively, and the movement that Miguel made from the center to the left, and Danny filling in and allowing himself to get the space to get the goal, and Venegas getting high on the right. It was all really good movement.”

Tonight, United takes on the New York Cosmos, who have lost two 1-0 games in a row, the franchise’s first losing streak since joining the league midway through 2013. Despite the losses, though, the Cosmos have controlled those games; they attempted 43 shots in the two games combined, against just 12 attempts for their opponents.

In other words, it might be another game in which United’s best chances come from counter-attacks. Given how successful Bracalello and Mendes were in this area last week, perhaps it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the same two in the lineup tonight.

NOTE: This appeared at SoccerCentric.

The New York Cosmos beat Minnesota United 1-0 on Monday night, but if it wasn’t for two exceptional saves by Minnesota keeper Matt Van Oekel and Cosmos striker Mads Stokkelien missing an open net from two yards away, United would have lost by three or four goals. Marcos Senna scored the game’s only goal for New York, curling a shot inside the far post with the outside of his right boot from 20 yards away, a difficult task that the aging Spanish star made look impossibly easy.

For most of the first half, Minnesota was unable to string two passes together or advance the ball forward. By the time the dust settled at halftime, the Cosmos had attempted seven shots, while United had yet to get a ball to travel even roughly in the direction of the New York goal.

After Senna scored with a half-hour to go, New York retreated defensively, allowing Minnesota to turn the stat-sheet tables a bit. In the final ten minutes of the match, United even had a few chances; Tiago Calvano missed an open header, and Christian Ramirez managed to turn on the penalty spot but hit his shot straight at Cosmos keeper Jimmy Maurer. Jamie Watson had one final chance for United, but his shot blazed high over the bar.

For the night, United managed just four shots, only two of which bothered the keeper, and the only way they found to consistently advance the ball was via long throws from Brian Kallman.

Minnesota has now played three games against the Cosmos since last summer, and lost all three 1-0. The loss drops United out of first place, behind Fort Lauderdale – their opponent this Saturday – on goal differential. With only two home games remaining in the first half and just four overall before the spring-season title is awarded, Saturday’s matchup is already a must-win game for Minnesota this season.

It’s a trip home that couldn’t come at a better time for United, which – for the first time in 2014 – looked disorganized and unable to play together.

NOTE: This recap appeared first at SoccerCentric.