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| Noble, but also not. |
The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...
Thumbnail History
I tend to think of Minnesota as a team that always makes the playoffs, but never looks much like reaching the end of them. That’s only half right, if for a couple reasons. First, Minnesota missed the post-season entirely their first two seasons and again in 2023. Second, even when the Loons do qualify – which, to be clear, they’ve done more often not and cleanly (i.e., not as a wild card) – they almost always fall out before the quarterfinals. That drops them into the folds of the biggest wrinkle in the Joy Points formula* - i.e., teams only get credit for qualifying for the playoffs when they reach the quarterfinals – and that choice obscures the reality that the Loons are a solid regular season team. “Solid” feels like a good descriptor for what Minnesota has historically done on the field, as well. Adrian Heath coached them from their ascent from the USL (in 2017) to round about the latter third of 2023, when they let him go. In my mind, “Heath-ball” has generally meant fielding teams that were constipated in every sense of the word, equal parts stubborn and organized, with a touch of ruthlessness. That started with the arrival of Osvaldo Alonso over from Seattle in 2019 and Minnesota carried that tradition forward with additions like Jan Gregus(?) and Hassani Dotson(?). Putting that shield in front of “imposing” center backs – i.e., large, slow-ish, but combative and capable center backs like Michael Boxall, Brent Kallman, (briefly) Ike Opara, and Bakaye Dibassy – went a long way toward taking care of one side of the team. On the other, Minnesota has this tic, equal parts knack and limitation, of finding one guy with enough talent to make a competent defense pay off enough times. The most famous version of that was the “mercurial” Emanuel Reynoso (here, “mercurial,” speaks to his love of playing hooky), but they've also pulled out a couple wild cards or two, with the too-oft injured Kevin Molino serving as a tragic figure. When all else fails, Minnesota leans into one of the best all-purpose Band-aids in MLS history, one-man multi-tool, Finnish jack-of-all-but-defensive-trades, Robin Lod to steer the ship to shore. When that certain magic player cannot be found, is unavailable (or sulks in Argentina, a la Reynoso), Minnesota winds up relying on a rotating cast of characters like Darwin Quintero (the dreams they had for him…), Ethan Finlay and, more recently, Bongokuhle Hlongwane (just re-signed), Tani Oluwaseyi, and half-random guys like, say, Franco Fragapane. All that work and movement has yielded the returns immediately below…
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| A visual. Probably not unfair. |
If Miami had a mirror in 2025, they saw Minnesota when they looked into it: the former scored freely and defended loosely (except in the playoffs), while the latter bricked up the defense and stole points on the counter – far from a rare tactic in MLS (hell, Portland has lived on that bread and butter well more than once). The Loons perfected a particularly life-draining iteration of the form, however, and based on the small sample that is my Bluesky feed, that pissed off more MLS fans than anything else in 2025, but the fruit of that rotten tree left them with more goals scored than all but 10 teams in the league – a doubly-impressive feat once you recall that Minnesota lost its leading goal scorer (Tani Oluwaseyi; ten goals, eight assists) in August (Villareal). Minnesota had enough things clicked into place to carry on after Oluwaseyi’s departure – e.g., they got the predictable all-around ability out of Robin Lod, Joaquin Pereyra gave them six goals, eleven assists, and they got crazy production out of right back (right?) Anthony Markanich (nine fucking goals!) on set pieces – to keep them competitive down the stretch and carry them to the Western Conference semifinals. Getting there took some overcoming – a 2025 season from Kelvin Yeboah that couldn’t carry the hype from his 2024 season, plus what look like persistent absences based on per-player minutes played – and that tells you how well head coach Eric Ramsay’s stubborn system worked. And yet, their three-leg Round One series against Seattle ranked among the best of the 2025 playoffs; Game 3 was nuts (how often do you get third-act surprises that require resolution in the epilogue?) One final…curious thing about Minnesota last season: they collected more points on the road (30 points on 8-3-6 on the road v 28 point on 8-5-4 at home). Then again, what travels better than a well-drilled bunker/counter strategy.
Long-Term Tendencies v Recent Trends
Besides eight seasons' worth of consistent, yet-middling on-field returns, there isn’t anything too deep in terms of tendencies. Making the playoffs is swell and all, but Minnesota has never come close to fielding a league-leading attack – in fact, they’ve only scored goals at or above the league average four times in their nine season history, and they’ve never scored much above average. The defenses operate in the same vein: barely on the good side of average, but a little more often and to better effect (they overcome mid attacks better than they do mid defenses). On the positive side, their 2025 top-line stats aligned nicely with that one wild (COVID) season when Minnesota stumbled within one game of MLS Cup and/or certain sacrifice at the feet of a ruthless Columbus team in MLS Cup 2020. Their defense was really good this season and they had the talent/system to make the most of it. Huh. Wonder where things go from here…
Players I Still Like/Additions So Far
Starting with the major departures, the Loons lost Robin Lod, Eric Ramsay and ferever-goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair (also, fuck off) in the off-season. Wild as the other two seem, if for different reasons, I’m not sure I’ll be able to accept that I’m watching Minnesota without seeing Robin Lod in their XI. I wouldn’t call the minor housecleaning insignificant either – I saw Hassani Dotson in a Seattle starting XI earlier today and Joseph Rosales moved to Austin, TX a couple weeks ago – which inevitably leads to talk about replacements. They signed Drake Callender (formerly of, I think, Miami), a responsible replacement for St. Clair, and I’ve seen enough good things from Tomas Chancalay (formerly, NE), to think he could do good things for Minnesota, provided he stays healthy in a way he has not with the Revs. With due respect to the young men involved, I only trust players who come in through the SuperDraft/MLS NEXT Pro/academy) when they earn it, which makes Colombian Mauricio Gonzalez the addition Minnesota worked hardest to land. Minnesota has a good core, they do, but I’m not sold on the new players replacing the reliable production they’ve lost. And they have a new coach. Definitely a team to watch in 2026, and with an open mind.
Historical Success(/Hysterical Failure)
Total Joy Points: 2
How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2020
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2024, 2025
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 2019
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