I said before the season that this year was going to be full of questions. That woefully undersold how puzzling 2026 has been for Minnesota United so far.
At points, Minnesota has looked like last year’s team but with better balance between attack and defense, a very exciting concept. At others — The Vancouver Debacle™ most notably — they’ve looked utterly lost. Not just adjusting to new ideas and new personnel, truly unclear on where their next pass should go and where teammates are likely to be.
The difficulty of their early season was no secret, but I underestimated how much it was going to make answering some of those key questions difficult.
Had Cameron Knowles actually rolled out a brand new mentality and tried a 4-2-2-2 formation against the Loons’ first five opponents, he’d have either been hailed as a footballing genius or an absolute fool with an 0-0-5 record and a goal differential in the -20s — and I know which of the two I’d bet on.
Last Saturday’s game was far from the ideal situation to put some of those new ideas into play: The Loons were on the road, playing against a team that has a much better offense than their table position would indicate, after a short week for the players returning from international duty, and navigating unexpected absences to James Rodriguez and Wil Trapp.
But even against that rather inauspicious backdrop, the Minnesota team that beat LA 2-1 on Saturday looked far more composed and confident than they had in the first five games.
They looked like a team that had ideas about what to do with the ball when they got it. They scored their first goal that didn’t require either a set piece or fast break. In fact, they won in spite of not recording a single corner or particularly dangerous free kick.
They didn’t just sit back and absorb onslaught after onslaught. Until the Galaxy’s desperate last rush at the end of the game, Minnesota had kept possession in balance at about 55% to 45%, hardly a low figure for an away team.
And while Los Angeles may feel as though they deserved an equalizer from one of the seven shots they took after the 80th minute, Minnesota probably should have put the game away in the 83rd minute when Bongokuhle Hlongwane’s shot/pass was neither one thing nor the other and slid past the post.
Neither team can really look at the breakdown and feel like the ultimate conclusion was wildly different from the actual flow of the game. Minnesota deserved points from the way they played. Getting all three was a nice bonus, but it wasn’t a smash-and-grab by any means.
A 2-1 win over a Galaxy side that still hasn’t gelled is far from a revelation, but it was a credible result and good clue that there’s more growth happening in Blaine than we’ve seen come the weekends. That should give both players and fans confidence that, with a few more reps and easier opposition, better results are coming soon. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
San Diego away, however, is decidedly still part of the tunnel.
Even without Chucky Lozano, their offense controls games: They average an MLS-high 64% possession. Anders Dryer and fellow Dane Marcus Ingvartsen have combined for seven goals and five assists already this season, and while per 90 stats haven’t yet stabilized, it’s notable that San Diego boasts the top four players — and five of the top seven — in accurate passes per 90.
It’s worth noting, however, that they started 3-0-0 with a +8 GD thanks to a 5-0 win over Montreal, a 2-0 win over St. Louis, and a 1-0 win away to Sporting KC. Not exactly Murderer’s Row; those are the 2nd, 9th, and 3rd worst teams in MLS respectively per Matt Doyle’s latest power rankings.
Since then, they’ve flattened out a bit. Neither their draw away to FC Dallas (3-3) nor home against RSL (2-2) is a terrible result and both could be chalked up to their wild CONCACAF Champions Cup tie with Toluca.
They had no such midweek distraction coming out of the international break, but San Jose took them behind the woodshed anyway. Even down a man for the final 60 minutes of the game, San Diego had a majority of the ball, but that didn’t stop the Quakes from taking 24 shots and creating five big chances en route to a 3-0 pummeling.
On paper, this looks like another disaster waiting to happen for the Loons, but that glosses over both San Diego’s uneven play since their cake walk opening and Minnesota’s improvement since their hall of horrors.
After giving up multiple goals in three of their first four games, MNUFC has only given up one in the last two. His debut against Vancouver was a nightmare, but Kyle Duncan has settled in at the right wing/wingback/fullback position as effectively as Minnesota could have hoped.
Nicolás Romero’s return to the lineup has solidified the backline and, perhaps even more importantly, has freed Anthony Markanich to sit higher up the pitch. This is both his preferred line of confrontation defensively and allows him to get in behind defenders when the ball turns over.
He likely won’t score an easier goal this season than his tally against LA, but that is the template the Loons want to copy over and over again. And with Joaquin Pereyra, they have the passer to do it whether James Rodriguez becomes a fixture in the lineup or not.
Pereyra has been quietly stellar to start this season. According to American Soccer Analysis’ G+ component score, he’s been the best passer in MLS by a sizable margin. He’s currently about 18% better than the five players clumped below him, including Son Heung-Min and Rodrigo de Paul, and while six games isn’t an overwhelmingly large sample, this isn’t a feature of one good game and the lie of extrapolation.
Minnesota is neither as good as San Diego’s last three opponents, nor as bad as their first three, and like last season, both teams are more than willing to let the other play how they prefer to play. San Diego will likely have 60-65% possession, but the Loons will get their chances on the counter — especially since the outstanding Manu Duah won’t be there to snuff out promising attacks.
A week ago, Minnesota United looked like a team that was beginning to grow into the season: calmer, more cohesive, and more confident in possession and even under siege. San Diego’s style makes them a very interesting test of that growth; they will absolutely test the Loons’ defensive organization and offensive ruthlessness. But, if the team that showed up in Los Angeles last week made the 113 mile drive south to Snapdragon Stadium, Minnesota will test San Diego right back and may even steal the points.