The transfer window ended with a flurry of activity for Minnesota United, with Mamadou Dieng, Alexis Fariña, Dominik Fitz, Kenyel Michel, and Nectarios Triantis coming in, and Tani Oluwaseyi officially sold to Villareal.
Three of the five incoming players have made their debuts for the Loons — none has played more than 30 minutes total — and a fourth won’t join the team this season. We still don’t know much about what the team will look like once everyone is settled in, so it’s still fair to ask: Who are the five players Kahled El-Ahmad et al. brought in? Can they help the Loons win their first trophy since moving to MLS, or are they a few years away?
Let’s get into it:
Mamadou Dieng
Age: 21
Position: Striker
Acquired From: Hartford Athletic (USA, USL Championship)
Fee: $250k
Dieng is both first of the signings alphabetically and the first to make his debut for the team. Statistically, his 13 minute, seven touch debut was unremarkable, but he shielded the ball well, had a good sense for open spaces, and moved fluidly. Even in that glimpse, he showed why Minnesota was interested in him.
In his first season at Hartford, Dieng came off the bench in 11 of his first 13 games, failing to record a goal or an assist as he found is footing in the league. On July 12, 2024 he started against Charleston Battery*, scored in the 20th minute, and never looked back. He scored 11 goals in his last 18 appearances — 17 starts — and cemented himself in the lineup.
This season, there was no delayed launch. He scored in his second game and added eight more along with a pair of assists in 18 games before coming to Minnesota.
Even at 20, Dieng plays like a veteran scorer. His movement in the box is purposeful and intuitive, and he doesn’t need much space to get shot off. He’s in the 32nd percentile for touches in the box — not always a good sign for a striker — but the 73rd percentile for shots, and 90th for expected goals per shot.
There’s a lot to like about Dieng, especially given that he’s just 20, but he has much to work on as well. His passing is particularly poor; he’s in the 13th percentile for total passes, 17th percentile for short and medium pass completion and the 32nd percentile for smart passes among USL Championship strikers.** A poacher’s skill set is plenty valuable, but understanding how to bring his teammates into the attack to keep defenders out of balance will be critical, especially as he goes up against better defenders in MLS.
There’s no one I trust more about USL players than John Morrissey. Here’s his verdict on Dieng’s transfer:
Alexis Fariña
Age: 20
Position: Midfield/Right Wing
Acquired From: Cerro Porteño (Paraguay, Primera División)
Fee: One-year loan without fee, Minnesota has a purchase option
Paraguay boasts the third highest-rated domestic league in South America behind Brazil and Argentina, and Cerro Porteño is a top club there, so the fact that Fariña was able to break into the first team at all is a testament to his potential. It also may be why he was available.
Despite breaking into Cerro Porteño’s first team in 2023 at just 18 years old, Fariña hasn’t gotten consistent playing time. This calendar year, he’s appeared 22 times for Cerro Porteño but made just eight starts, and played 45 minutes or more in a game just six times. It feels as though the club is genuinely high on his potential, but unable to give him the playing time he needs to reach it.
His spotty playing time also makes it challenging to set realistic expectations for him. On a per 90 basis, he’s one of the best passers in Paraguay: 91st percentile for expected assists, 98th for progressive passes, 88th for long pass completion, and 86th for short and medium. On a per 90 basis, last year’s biggest goal-scoring threat for Minnesota was Sam Sashoua with 0.88 xG per 90. Extrapolation isn’t always our friend.
Even if I’m unwilling to buy that Fariña is a world-class assist-maestro based on his per 90s, it’s clear that he does pass the ball well. His 15 successful crosses put him in the 95th percentile despite coming in just 613 minutes. He also created 28 chances in that time, good for 92nd percentile. He can play centrally or off the right wing, and while he’ll be a depth option for the rest of this season, I’ll be very interested to see what he does with more consistent playing time next year — assuming he can earn it.
If Fariña was curious what playing in Minnesota would be like, he didn’t have to go far to research it: He was teammates at Cerro Porteño with former Loons Alan Benitez and Luis Amarilla.
Dominik Fitz
Age: 26
Position: Attacking Midfield
Acquired From: Austria Wein (Austria, Bundesliga)
Fee: $2.1 million
This is an exciting signing, the kind of deal that can materially improve Minnesota — starting next year for sure, but perhaps even in his short time this season.
Fitz was one of the top players in the Austrian Bundesliga last year and attracted attention from Vancouver and NYRB over the winter. There is speculation in the Austrian media that his availability comes down to a budget shortfall at Austia Viena. Whatever the underlying reason, getting a player of Fitz’s caliber and reputation for less than a DP deal is a terrific piece of business.
Most publicly available market values have him around $4 million, and the Loons brought him in for just a shade over $2 million, giving them a ton of flexibility to bring pieces around him — assuming he makes the adjustment to MLS effectively.
He is an incredibly high-volume player: Among midfielders in the Austrian Bundesliga, no one had more touches than he did, he was in the 94th percentile for successful passes, and in the 95th percentile for shots. He’s going to be on the ball a ton.
With that type of usage rate, if he plays well, his skill set will make him incredibly valuable and open up a style of play Minnesota hasn’t shown this season. His current attribute profile from SofaScore maps him pretty closely to the Revs’ Carles Gil, who was an MLS Best XI player and currently rates as the league’s best advanced playmaker according to Ben Griffis’ analysis of Wyscout data.***
A little closer to home, here he is compared to Joaquin Pereyra. As above, Fitz’s scores are in green.
His quality is undeniable, but his profile is very different from the type of attacking midfielders the Loons have had before. He’s not going to be a quick-passing, possession-oriented attacker like Emanuel Reynoso and Darwin Quintero, who mostly attacked centrally. Fitz prefers to get wide and cross the ball — his average pass length was over 23 yards last season — but both his through-balls and deep completion rates were exceptional in spite of that extra length.
A note of caution before we take a look at his radar: The percentile ranks here compare him to all central midfielders, including central attacking midfielders, true central midfielders, and defensive midfielders.
You know those massive paintings like Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment or Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights where the longer you stare at it, the more interesting stuff you find? That’s how I feel about this radar.
His defense looks lackluster at best, but no attacker should rank ahead of DM/CM for defensive actions. Compared strictly to other attackers, he’s quite good, especially in pressing situations.
The other glaring weakness according to his radar is his short and medium pass completion rate and there’s no easy way to explain that away. No matter how I look at it, I cannot figure out how a player who is so good at long passes and crosses struggles with what should be much easier attempts.
His fourth percentile dispossession rate is the biggest worry for me, even above his baffling short pass completion rate. His ability to hit home-run balls makes him an asset in late-game situations given the way they Loons have played this season, but that’s something they’re trying to move away from and he isn’t the player that will help them control the ball to give the defense a break.
Even with those downsides, I’m high on Fitz. Incredibly high. If he can stay healthy, he could be a transformational player for the Loons, astounding praise given how good they already are.
One last note: Fitz ranks highly for smart passes, which Wyscout defines as “A creative and penetrative pass that attempts to break the opposition’s defensive lines to gain a significant advantage in attack.” That line-breaking ability combined with Dieng’s intuitive positioning and Bongokuhle Hlongwane’s late runs from the wing has the potential to give Minnesota’s opponents nightmares as they try to rotate defensively.
Kenyel Michel
Age: 20 — turns 21 on Sept. 17
Position: Midfield/Right Wing
Acquired From: LD Alajuelense (Costa Rica, Premera División)
Fee: $750,000
Michel has already been loaned back to Alajuelense, so it’ll be fun to monitor him during Costa Rican Primera League’s Apertura this fall/winter, but he won’t make an impact for the Loons this season. While that’s a bit disappointing, it’s also a sign of how much he already means to one of the biggest clubs in the confederation.
He has been called one of the best young players in Costa Rica and was named to the provisional Gold Cup roster, though he didn’t make the final tournament squad. His tehnical skill is on par with on-ball menaces like Reynoso or Orlando City’s Martin Ojeda, so while his game is still developing, the raw talent is undeniable.
Two things pop out on his radar:
- There are very few things a winger needs to do that Michel truly cannot.
- The difference for Michel between a fine career and one that leads him to even bigger things is whether he can add a second superior skill to go along with his key passing — like carrying, crossing, defense, or shooting.
Like Fitz, he’s a master of the line-breaking pass. As the Loons found out with Reynoso after the league started to catch up to him, unless Michel can show another facet to his game, defenders will sell out to keep him from hitting a pass along the grass and neutralize his best weapon. If he develops a Plan B good enough to keep defenders honest, it will make both those skills that much more potent.
Nectarios Triantis
Age: 22
Position: Defensive Midfield
Acquired From: Sunderland (England, Premier League)
Fee: $2.5 million
I went deep on Triantis when the rumors about him first surfaced, and came away hoping against hope he would come to Minnesota and feeling fairly confident he would stay in England.
I’ve never been so happy to be wrong.
As high as I am on Triantis, my feeling ahead of the San Diego game was that he was likely to need an adjustment period before really showing what he can do simply because every league moves at a different pace, and defensive midfielders have to cope with that shift in highly precise ways.
With the massive caveat that he has recorded all of 13 touches as a Loon in a game that went off the rails, I think I may have underestimated him. He got forward more than I expected him to, he was calm and confident on the ball, he moved well, and seemed to have a good sense of how San Diego wanted to move the ball when they had possession.
If he shows the same defensive prowess he showed in Scotland and the kind of forward-moving instinct he showed against San Diego, the Loons will be able to create overloads through the middle of the field rather than just the wings. That flexibility should help unlock new attacking lanes for players like Pereyra, Joseph Rosales, and Robin Lod, who switch sides of the field effortlessly and can be hard for defenders to track on a fast break.
Again, it’s just one game. Twice, Triantis and a teammate got into the same space, and both times it resulted in a goal instead of turnover — crazy things happen in small samples. But where my expectation for Triantis’ offensive contribution had been primarily as a platform, I’m now seeing a clear path for him to contribute on both ends of the field.
I’d be remiss not to mention the absolutely ridiculous goal he scored right at the end of regular time — one of the best debut goals in league history. He was also credited with an assist on Carlos Harvey’s goal, which means he has already tied his second-best season for goal contributions.
The Loons sold their best player in the middle of their best season ever. Criticism that they may have mortgaged their promising present for an unknown future is valid, and it’s exceptionally unlikely all five of these players reach the level they need to if they are to become key contributors for Minnesota, even if they all have intriguing tools right now. All of that is true.
But in Fitz and Triantis, the Loons brought in two players who directly address some of their biggest weaknesses, and both seem to be ready to plug in immediately. In Dieng, they have a player who has some polish already and plenty of room to grow. In Fariña and Michel, they have low-cost lotto tickets with high potential and concrete reasons to believe they’ll be able to contribute.
Only time will tell how good or bad this window really was, but hoping that Minnesota will bring home silverware this season while improving their long-term position is more than a fool’s hope.
Footnotes
* A fun fact: The game ended in a 2-2 draw with the 90th-minute equalizer scored by Anthony Markanich’s twin brother, Nick.
**It’s worth noting that percentile rankings in leagues like USL can get a little screwy because up-and-coming players like Dieng are competing with 28-32 year olds who can dominate at this level, but rise no higher.
***I owe Ben a debt of gratitude for putting Best11Scouting together. Ben, if you’re reading this, thank you, and your first beer is on me if you’re ever in Minnesota.