Minnesota United FC 2-0 Portland Timbers, the Brutal Math of Gettable Points & a San Diego Scouting Report [hiccup!]

THIS IS THE TRUTH! SMILE!!!

If you seriously thought Portland would win last Saturday, I salute your optimism. This post does not make a case for optimism – the deck’s stacked pretty high against that – but rather occupies a state of suspended animation that I can’t see dissipating until Merritt pulls the plug on Phil Neville’s tenure. Where things go from there…that’s some tricky shit. Moving on…

Minnesota United FC 2-0 Portland Timbers
What Passes for a Match Report
After multiple threats to skip the tick-tock of the match and just pass on a handful of broad impressions, I’m following through this time. Minnesota scored an early goal, nice finish by Tomas Chancalay (good player, bad history with injuries), but I was more disturbed by their successful targeting of Jose Caicedo for prying the ball loose – particularly one short week after declaring myself “sold” on the youngster (see Talking Point 6). Jefferson Diaz did the picking on that occasion and pulled it back for the assist, but my notes have Caicedo coughing up possession on both sides of Diaz’s mugging and, if there’s one must-have skill for a No. 6, it’s not giving up the ball in that position. It took the Loons until the second half to score their second – also around 15 minutes in, curiously – and the Timbers gave that one up by overcommitting to the attack. A great ball from (I believe) the highly-effective Joaquin Pereyra dropped from Minnesota’s right to Chancalay on Portland’s right and, with the Timbers midfield miles behind the play and the defense chasing, all he had to do once he landed the trap (with aplomb) was find a wide-open Kelvin Yeboah for a tap-in/his fifth goal of the season.

The final numbers paint a picture that Bob Ross couldn’t tidy up with a forest of happy trees, but Portland found chances, including feeds to a streaking, anxious Antony that one thinks would lift their xG higher than 1.0, but I don’t control such things. Cole Bassett – who arguably played the best game in an off-white Art Deco kit on Saturday (again, Kristoffer Velde gets my vote to make up for how often I’ve shit on him) – got a bit lucky to get a great chance about six yards out, but got unlucky by pinging his shot off the post (surely, that’s in here). Jimer Fory played a good cross to Felipe Mora that just fell a bit too low (29th minute), Brandon Bye found the ball at his feet after a good spell of pressure and played a peach of a cross that found no takers (63rd), Velde got loose on the counter a couple times in the second half only to have an errant touch push the ball out of his reach or to play a smart cross 10 yards behind a run on a long diagonal: maybe scribbling “thriving in garbage time” into my notes credits the effort too much, but this 1) wasn’t abject failure, and 2) wasn’t unexpected.

Getting Reacquainted with Minnesota United FC, the Very Modern Model of a Median MLS Franchise

"It could be going better!"

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, though, 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 directly more often than as a wild card team – 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 as a wild card if they clear the next two hurdles in the post-season – and that choice obscures the reality that the Loons are a solid regular season team. Solidity feels like a good descriptor for what Minnesota has done on the field through their short history, 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 - think stubborn and unimaginative - it took the organization getting its defensive midfield in order. It started with bringing Osvaldo Alonso over from Seattle in 2019 and Minnesota has kept that close enough to effective with additions like Jan Gregus and Hasani Dotson(?). Still, putting a 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 (he's a chronic hooky-player), 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 is, say, refusing to report for duty (see: Reynoso), Minnesota winds up relying on a rotating cast of characters like Darwin Quintero (for whom they had huge dreams, honestly), Ethan Finlay, 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…

Total Joy Points: 1

How They Earned Them (& *How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2020
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2024
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 2019