Friday, the Stars announced the signing of Max Griffin, a striker who played last season for Orlando City and the LA Blues in the third-tier USL Pro league. A few North American Soccer League fans might remember him from 2010, when he was the Rookie of the Year with the Austin Aztex in the NASL’s precursor league, the USSF 2nd Division. Griffin, who stuck with the Austin franchise as it moved to Orlando for 2011, and who went on loan to the LA Blues for part of last season, has scored 27 goals over the past three seasons – 11 apiece in 2010 and 2011, and five last year.

The move also gives Minnesota yet another option in the attack. At the beginning of the offseason, the Stars had just Nate Polak and Travis Wall on their forward depth chart, but the signings of Griffin, Pablo Campos, and Etienne Barbara, as well as the re-signing of Simone Bracalello, mean that the worry has now become how all of these players will find minutes.

Given the troubles that the team had with scoring goals last year, though, it’s probably a good problem for them to have. And perhaps head coach Manny Lagos is cooking up some sort of 3-2-5 formation that will revolutionize the game.

NOTEBOOK

Griffin joined the team for training on Friday, making Barbara the only player under contract that has yet to make it to practice… The team played some nine-man, indoor, 35-minute mini-games at the National Sports Center Friday, giving the team its first chance for something approaching real soccer. Griffin, clearly in shape, led all scorers with four goals in his 70 minutes, and new signings Campos and Aaron Pitchkolan scored twice apiece. Lagos also got a few minutes, even hitting the crossbar himself with a long shot, thus making us wonder if another player-coach is in the Stars’ future… former Minnesota Thunder midfielder Zafer Kilickan, now an assistant women’s soccer coach at Augsburg, made an appearance to help fill out one of the mini-game teams.

The Minnesota Stars have re-signed free agent central defender Cristiano Dias to a two-year contract, thus completing the team’s likely back four for the coming season. Dias was a key component in the Stars defense over the past two years, though he fell somewhat out of favor towards the end of the 2012 season.

Dias is currently playing for the Missouri Comets in the Major Indoor Soccer League, which begins playoffs next week. He’ll join up with the Stars for preseason training whenever the Comets’ season is complete.

With the move, the Stars now have four defenders under contract who have spent the past several years with the club. At the moment, it would appear that Justin Davis and Brian Kallman will slot in in the outside back positions, with Dias and Connor Tobin in central defense.

In a press release, Dias described himself as “really happy” to be back, and head coach Manny Lagos described himself as “very excited,” so everyone appears to be on the same page here.

Notes: Davis, who missed Monday’s training session after being on trial with half the teams in MLS, rejoined the team on Tuesday… the club announced that Paul O’Connor, an assistant and goalkeeper coach at Benilde-St. Margaret’s, would be working with the team’s keepers in breakout sessions this spring.

In addition to the players that appear on the current Minnesota Stars roster, the team has a few non-roster invitees currently in preseason camp. Here’s a quick rundown of the players that are trying to earn a spot on the roster:

– Peter McKeown is a Hill-Murray graduate who went to Loyola University in Chicago, where he finished his goalkeeping career with 20 shutouts, good for second place all-time in Loyola history. He trained with the Stars in the offseason this winter, and apparently impressed enough to earn a spot as the fourth keeper in training.

– Joseph Lapira has one of the stranger soccer stories you’ll ever hear. A Lake Charles, Louisiana native with an Irish mom, he won the Hermann Trophy as the nation’s top college soccer player in 2006, when he scored 22 goals for Notre Dame. As he finished up his college career, Ireland called him up to the national team, where he became the first amateur to play for Ireland since 1964. Since then, he’s played three seasons in the Norwegian second division and one in the Indian second division, where he was a teammate of former Minnesota Thunder forward Johnny Menyongar.

– Nik Robson is a midfielder who’s played for the New Zealand U-20 national team. He shone at forward for three years at Central Florida, then transferred to New Mexico, where he appeared in all 22 matches and started 12 in midfield. Toronto FC picked him in the third round of the secondary MLS draft this year.

– Taiga Soeda is a Japanese midfielder who impressed with his performance at the team’s combine last week; he’s the only player to come through the combine into preseason training with the team.

– Midfielder Gerzon Blanco is a Cal State-Fullerton product who played with current Stars defender Kevin Venegas. He scored four goals in 18 appearances for the Titans last year as a senior.

– Jordan Green is a striker from Hastings College in Nebraska, the same school as Stars striker Nate Polak. Green scored an astonishing 28 goals in 23 games in 2012.

– Luis Heitor-Piffer can play either defense or midfield. The Brazilian was once named the conference player of the year when he was at Grand View University in Des Moines several years back, but I can’t find out too much about him beyond that.

It may be the final week of February, but it’s also the beginning of the American soccer season. Major League Soccer kicks off this Saturday across the continent, but closer to home, it’s the beginning of the preseason for the Minnesota Stars, who began training at 9am this morning at the National Sports Center.

Unfortunately for Minnesota, February has dropped like a ton of snowy bricks on the team’s preseason plan. The Stars are planning to visit both Kansas City and Chicago this preseason, but the Midwest got hit with nearly a foot of February last week, and another foot or more is predicted for both potential visit partners later this week. The team is currently working to reschedule and re-jigger the training trips to minimize the potential of any players being injured by marauding snowbanks.

The only player under contract missing from today’s 9 a.m. kickoff was new striker Etienne Barbara, who had been scheduled to meet the team amidst the Kansas City trip. That said, it’s likely that several more players will be added to the roster between today and the season’s April 6 kickoff, especially since there are a number of out-of-contract players who are still playing in this year’s edition of the Major Indoor Soccer League, which concludes in mid-March. Today is the first appearance for new Stars Bryan Arguez, Pablo Campos, Aaron Pitchkolan, Daryl Sattler, though, as the Stars begin to figure how their new players will slot into the lineup.

The team is still trying to figure out how to get a few exhibition games on the docket. For now, though, Minnesota’s at home in Blaine for a week’s worth of training.

Hello there, soccer reader, and welcome to the SoccerCentric blog! I’m your host, Jon Marthaler. You might know me from Saturdays at RandBall, or from one of my other online sportswriting ventures, but I’m here on startribune.com to write about soccer.

A word about this blog: I’m going to be focusing on pro soccer in Minnesota, with only occasional forays to soccer locations further afield. I know that many of you may be fans of the US national teams or the Premier League or La Liga or Major League Soccer, and while I am too, there’s simply too much ground to cover there. So until Zygi Wilf buys himself a MLS team or an English team, I’m going to be focused mostly on the hometown eleven, otherwise known as the Minnesota Stars of the North American Soccer League.

It’s been a big offseason for the Stars. After two years of being league-owned, the team has a new local owner in retired UnitedHealth Group CEO Bill McGuire. For the first time in years, then, the franchise has money to spend, and this has led to more new things at the club – not least, a raft of new players, including 2012 NASL Player of the Year Pablo Campos and 2011 NASL Player of the Year Etienne Barbara.

“The team that nobody wanted” finally has an owner, and now, the Stars have constructed what one former NASL player referred to as “the NASL version of the Miami Heat.” But just like the Heat, the team’s new look is giving them something they haven’t had in past years: high expectations.

The Stars have been wildly successful in the playoffs in both the last two years, winning the league championship in 2011 and coming within a couple of minutes of a second title last year, but both of these editions of the Stars struggled mightily during the regular season. In 2011, the Stars went nine matches in August and September without a win. In 2012, the Stars went from mid-July to mid-September without a win, an eight-match stretch in which the team netted just four goals.

In both seasons, the Stars finished sixth in the eight-team standings, but used head coach Manny Lagos’s particular brand of playoff magic to make post-season title runs. In 2013, though, that possibility is out the window, thanks to a new split-season NASL format. To make it into November’s league championship game, the Stars will have to win either the spring (April through June) or fall (August through October) title.

There’s no time this year for a summer swoon. It’s win half of the season, or watch the playoffs – shortened as they are – from home. And it’s clear from the investment of the new ownership that winning is now an expectation, not a pleasant surprise.

Just two players in the NASL’s two-year history have scored 20 goals in a season, and the Stars now have both. Barbara and Campos played together for the Carolina Railhawks in 2011, a strike partnership that led to 20 goals for Barbara and 12 for Campos. Barbara endured an injury-ravaged season with Vancouver in Major League Soccer last year, but Campos stayed in the NASL with San Antonio and took over the top of the scoring chart, netting 20 times himself for the Scorpions.

Minnesota also added former USA Under-20 Team midfielder Bryan Arguez, who made 13 appearances last season for FC Edmonton in the NASL while on loan from Montreal of MLS. Arguez, still just 24, has spent most of his career in the MLS and in the German top division, but is searching for consistent performances to get himself back on track.

In addition to Campos, Minnesota also raided 2012 regular-season champions San Antonio to sign defensive midfielder Aaron Pitchkolan and goalkeeper Daryl Sattler. Sattler, 32, led all regular keepers in the NASL last year with a 0.79 goals-against average. And while Campos was leading the scoresheet and Sattler was leading the keepers, Pitchkolan was quietly anchoring the Scorpions in their own half. At least one San Antonio insider has referred to Pitchkolan as perhaps the biggest loss for the Scoripions, going into 2013.

The Stars will also have a new home in 2013, at least for some of their matches. Minnesota will play five of their six spring-season home games in the Metrodome, rather than at their traditional home at the National Sports Center in Blaine. In part, the team is moving indoors to avoid the early-season cold, but they also hope to attract more fans to the downtown location – fans that might then follow the team to Blaine later in the year.

The Stars’ biggest home crowd of the year in 2012 was for a season-opening game at the Dome, as 8,600 people saw the team draw with Carolina. The front office is certainly hoping to exceed that number this spring, especially given that they now have expanded resources which which to promote the team.

Later in the year, Minnesota will also have a new opponent, one that is drawing international interest given its links to soccer’s American past. The New York Cosmos will debut as part of the NASL for the fall season, something that’s even garnered the attention of a publication like The Economist. And though the reborn Cosmos haven’t yet kicked a ball, they’ve already announced plans for a 25,000-seat stadium in Nassau County.

Put it all together, then, and it’s been an exciting offseason for Stars fans. But for the first time, the team now has expectations. Minnesota will likely begin the season as favorites for the spring title, and I can’t imagine that the new ownership will tolerate struggling for very long, not after the investment they’ve made in the team.

The “little team that could” has now become the “big team that should.” And it should make for a fascinating 2013 season.