After last weekend’s strange and wonderful breakout for Minnesota United, I expected this week to tell us whether that was a repeatable or a random-one off.
Their 3-3 draw with Orlando definitively showed it was… both? Neither? It was exciting, that much is certain, beyond that, it’s hard to say anything else is.
One game isn’t a representative sample of anything, but with that caveat, here’s where I stand: San Jose demonstrated what the Loons can do with their new formation and personnel but that level of success is only going to come against teams that allow Minnesota to play their game without much interference.
With 90 more minutes of the new-look Loons in the books and with apologies to Peter King, here are five things I think I think about Minnesota United:
- San Jose was uniquely bad, but last week wasn’t a fluke
One of the remarkable things about last week’s win in San Jose was how easy Minnesota made it look. Down a goal in the 4th minute, they never waivered, and San Jose never made them question whether they would see the game out.
Orlando was clearly a much better team and it showed in several ways: Even when the Loons had good chances, they didn’t have quite as much time as the Quakes had given them; they couldn’t bypass the midfield as easily and it slowed down the attacks; and there was no point where it looked like OCSC was just going to roll over and die.
But even with all that being true, Minnesota demonstrably outplayed Orlando for huge swaths of the game. They won the big chances created 8-3, had 15 dangerous attacks to OCSC’s six, outshot them 21-6, and won the xG battle 3.79-0.81. They did all the things they needed to do to win, but didn’t.
On one hand, that’s pretty defeating for them to play that well and not get three points. On the other, if they play like that every week, they’ll win the vast majority of their remaining games almost irrespective of the opposition.
Oh, and those hapless Quakes? They went down to Houston and held the hosts to a 0-0 draw. It was the first time the Dynamo had been shut out since May 13 away to RSL, a run of eight games, and their first home shutout since April 4 against Seattle. MLS is weird. And creepy.
- The foundation is good, but the results need to follow quickly
“Trust the process” has become almost as cliche in sports as “goals change games,” and it’s exactly as valuable as the process we’re supposed to be trusting. The Oklahoma City Thunder’s process was clearly worth trusting; the Minnesota Twins’… less so.
From coaching staff, to front office folks, to individual players, the Loons have consistently said versions of “we think we’re doing the right things and we believe the results will come” aka “trust the process.” They aren’t explicitly wrong, the underlying numbers show that Minnesota should be a better team than their place in the table indicates, but at some point hope that better is on its way isn’t a viable strategy anymore.
And yet, Minnesota played very well last night and the result is inextricably linked to Alan Chapman’s profane decision to let play continue after Drake Callender suffered a concussion. If that play is blown dead – as it should have been by rule – the game is wildly different. I’m not going so far as to say Minnesota would have won, I don’t think that’s a given, but Orlando’s second goal was a direct result of Minnesota pushing forward to find an equalizer, and you could easily argue that Minnesota’s three-goal blitz came as a result of Orlando relaxing a bit with a two-goal lead. The result is simultaneously the only thing that matters and wholly unrepresentative of the game.
With 13 games left in the season, Minnesota still has time to prove their process is worth trusting, but they need to start immediately: Their next five games are all against teams within four points of them in the Western Conference standings.
- This two-striker formation is the way forward
At the start of the game, it looked like Minnesota was trying the same formation but a slightly different tactic. It seemed as though Marcus Caldeira was consistently getting ahead of Kelvin Yeboah as almost a knock-down striker to retain possession off long-balls in from the midfield. The result was that the two of them were on an island as they waited for support and it was too easy for Orlando to swarm them.
Once they reverted back to what had worked against San Jose — both forwards running more or less in sync and moving off one another with the support of their wings — it worked again, leading directly to the first goal, and creating a few other chances.
More than anything, the personnel change feels like it has more effectively spread out the attacking load. Both strikers scored, Yeboah added an assist — though having watched that sequence a dozen times now, I am very confident that was a badly mishit shot and Caldeira timed his run to perfection to bail him out — Joaquin Pereyra pulled the strings and got an assist, Anthony Markanich scored. All of the players who should be driving the offense are involved, but no one looks like they’re feeling overly burdened.
One other thing that has come as a byproduct of the new formation is Kyle Duncan being pushed forward as a wingback, which suits him better than the end-to-end fullback role did. He was the hockey assist on the first goal and a shot assist on the third, giving him 0, 1, or 2 assists on the night depending on whose definition you use, but no matter what, he has reemerged as an offensive threat the way he was earlier in the season and the team is better for it.
However, whether because of his pressing higher up or Jefferson Diaz being Minnesota’s fourth-best centerback, Orlando attacked that side mercilessly. I suspect other teams will, too until the Loons show they can stop that effectively.
- More rotation is needed or the Loons are going to repeat last season’s swoon
I do not envy Knowles this challenge, but his team needs to rack up wins and he needs to get some key guys rest before they collapse. Pereyra and Morris Duggan* in particular are still working incredibly hard all game, but they seem to be wearing out a little bit. Knowles’ style isn’t as intense as Eric Ramsay’s was, so the fatigue may not be setting in as badly, but last year’s team had the luxury of phoning in a few late-season games like Colorado away, Chicago home, and L.A. Galaxy away. This year’s team will not have that kind of margin to burn.
Getting a few key players back from injury — Nicolas Romero, Carlos Harvey, and Nectarios Triantis chief among them — will help quite a bit, but with days left in the transfer window, it would be good to see at least one more player come in who feels capable of stepping in for Pereyra without a massive drop in quality. Otherwise, the decision on which games to rotate for is going to be a tough one. Minnesota has no remaining games against the Eastern Conference and they’ve already finished with the presumptive conference champion. Do they punt their remaining games with Houston? LAFC away? Not a lot of great options left and plenty of bad ones.
- Staying above the line is what matters and I think Minnesota can do it
One of the great lies of American sports is that anything can happen in the playoffs. Sure, it sometimes happens that great teams stumble and the scrappy wild card team wins it all, but for the most part, underdog runs and feel-good stories end before the trophy is presented. Combine that with MLS’ bloated playoff structure and it’s not hard to see why there’s skepticism around the value of being one of the last teams in.
While nothing is settled in the West outside of Vancouver’s likely coronation, Minnesota has enough working against them that breaking into the top four is likely going to be too big an ask. If this new look continues to settle in and Minnesota can stay above the line, they should end up in about the 6-8 seed. They will be a very tough draw.
I’m not suggesting Minnesota is a dark-horse candidate for MLS Cup right now — though if you disagree, you can get solid +4000 odds — but they have a difficult enough road to the playoffs that as long as they can get in, they’ll have shown they can compete with the best of the West. As much as I’ve scoffed at teams for whom just slipping into the playoffs is the goal, if Minnesota can do that this year, they’ll have come through a hellish season to do it, which should give them a lot of confidence that they control their own destiny more than their opponents do.
(This offer of hope not valid if Drake Callender is out for a meaningful amount of time, void where prohibited.)