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

Getting Reacquainted with Minnesota United FC...

Don't google "special boy." The images only get darker.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History

If you put a gun to my head before I wrote this post and asked me when Minnesota United FC joined the league, I’d be writing this post at your mercy. 2017? Then again, maybe that’s for the best…they still don’t have a damn head coach last I heard…

One wild season aside (see below), I think of Minnesota as a team that always makes the playoffs, but never looks much like reaching the end of them. Turns out that’s only half right: the Loons fell short in both of their first two seasons – and by a fair amount. The half-remembered consistency kicked in after that: they qualified for the playoffs in each of the next four seasons - 2019-2022 - if from the middle of the table or thereabouts; 7th place overall finish in 2019 is their high-water mark. Adrian Heath coached them from their ascent from the USL (in 2017) to (something like) the latter third of 2023, when they let him go. In my mind, “Heath-ball” has generally meant trotting out teams that were sturdy in every sense of the word - i.e., stubborn and unimaginative – but that, like the other pieces above, didn’t fall into place until Heath got his defensive midfield in order. That took care of one side of the team, for as long as it did, anyway, but Minnesota has this tic, equal parts knack and limitation, of finding one guy with that special something, a game-changer…

…that’s just one game-changer, mind. Don’t want to go about putting on airs.

Best Season(s)

2020, easily, the playoff run that put the fear of God into a Seattle Sounders team that was a dead man walking without even knowing it (Columbus Crew SC beat Seattle at a stroll in MLS Cup 2020). Minnesota had found Emanuel Reynoso by then – i.e., the greatest game-changer in Loons history – which meant they’d finally found a means to make “stubborn” payoff and even dream a little. MLS journeyman/hot boy, Kevin Molino, did just as much as Reynoso to make that happen. Think of it as a combination of two kinds of wizardry, something not seen before or since in Minnesota.

Columbus Crew SC 1-1 Portland Timbers: Comedy Gold

My birthday came early this year!

Did the Portland Timbers deserve their late, late equalizer? No, they did not. But that also feels like the wrong question for the moment. So, try this:

Was it funny? Yes, yes it was. I’d sit through a three-hour insurance seminar with an hour devoted to "team-building" and a bologna sandwich and Kool-Aid for a lunch if you told me I could see sad Caleb Porter at the end of it.

Still, smart shot by Santiago Moreno. And, oh, the whimsy of the assist coming off Bill Tuiloma’s head! As for Columbus Crew SC: I’d pity them under literally every other circumstance, but when your team needs a point (and FC Cincinnati needs someone to trip up there rival) you harden your heart and point and laugh....still, you gotta wonder which god Columbus pissed off...

As I said when I sat down to a frog in a tray way back in junior high, there’s so little to dissect here. Columbus played the better game, just slower than they needed to. Despite what the calendar says, the game as a whole had a mid-August vibe. With few exceptions – and those will be noted below – the Timbers played the first half as if they didn’t even want the points and they didn’t raise their game all that much in the second. A great feed to an increasingly anonymous Yimmi Chara and a flurry of corner kicks aside (all around the 58th minute), Portland rarely got close enough to see Columbus’ goal, never mind threaten it.

In their defense, Columbus didn’t do much better. They came within a stray shoulder of scoring an insurance goal, of course, and Cucho Hernandez got loose a couple times, but, apart from "that magic moment" when Kevin Molino put them ahead, I think the xG does a swell job of translating that sleeper of a game into numbers. Again, that felt like nothing so much as sitting through a long, pointless movie that slips in a great joke right before the credits rolled.

And, because I don’t think we learned much of anything today, let’s just do talking points and get on with our day.

Portland Timbers 1-3 Minnesota United FC: Deva Ju, Dammit

Best scenario, right?

I remember the happy tweets from the first 30 minutes of the Portland Timbers preseason game against Minnesota United FC. While there was some confusion about whether the balance of the Loons’ line-up came from their first or second team, general agreement held that the Timbers B-team was giving them the proverbial business. The business, I tell you.

The Timbers actually scored the first goal in that preseason game, only for Minnesota to start by finding ways to stop the Timbers attack and end with them punching Portland four goals into submission before it all ended in a 4-2- win for them, again, in Portland. The Timbers pulled one goal back courtesy of Ken Krolicki (and may we meet again, no, not seriously), but the loss was total, abject, and a bunch of other words authors like to use to really drive home a point. Tonight, Portland appeared to have repeated the feat of pulling back one useless goal, only to have it called back, correctly and painfully, as offside (and it's not even worthy of a solo highlight...damn). So, that’s not even a consolation goal and now the games count. Super.

Portland lost to Minnesota 1-3 tonight in Portland, at Providence Park, and this was unnervingly close to what I expected to happen. The sense of déjà vu didn’t just go back to the preseason loss; it went back to Portland’s aimless, meandering 2019.

The pattern is, by now, fairly well established: Portland can’t score goals, which means that pretty much any team with a sufficiently positive goal differential has a fair chance of beating them any given week. Minnesota, as it happens, has become one of those teams. In a fun twist, a lot of the key work came from MLS 3.0 (or thereabouts) players – e.g., Kevin Molino and Ethan Finlay (see all goals, but the third). These aren’t world-beaters, their talents rarely translate to the world stage (not least because they don’t get the chance so often and…fine, most of them would die on the biggest stage), but the part of me that frets over the United States’ capacity to produce effective attacking players always thrills a little at seeing loosely-known players from the home country take charge and win a game. Raising the bar for the next generation is a good thing…just wish they didn’t raise it at Portland’s expense.