This is the first of four(ish) pieces on players I believe Minnesota United could be targeting following the World Cup. Read the initial bird omens along with me.
As I hinted in the opening to the previous piece, New Zealand’s Elijah Just was a player that caught my eye as soon as he took the field against Iran. His contributions in that game were obvious: a pair of goals in the 7th and 54th minutes, the latter finishing off a beautiful flowing move for the All Whites.
Egypt and Belgium presented sterner challenges, but he continued to be effective, ending the tournament with three goals on seven shots, 83% passing, and having been involved consistently at both ends of the pitch. New Zealand used him primarily as a left winger, but he rotated centrally, especially during defensive sequences as you can see from his heatmap:
The map looks sparse but remember this is just a three-game sample. Now remember that it was not so very long ago that a sample of about the same size was enough to get a player a big-time move. Not hard to see why so many of them failed, is it?
Fortunately, Just also played 2700 minutes in the Scottish Premiership for Motherwell last season, so that paints a more robust picture.
Motherwell played most of the season in a 4-2-3-1, but occasionally moved into a 4-3-3. Not only did Just’s role vary between the formations, it varied within them as well. In the 4-2-3-1, he predominantly played the 10, though he also played up top as the solo striker. In the 4-3-3, he was typically deployed as a wing and played both sides.
His preference for the channels feels atypical for a central attacking midfielder, but it works well given the amount of interchanging the current attack does, and would keep the field from getting clogged when Kelvin Yeboah camps out at the top of the box.
Just’s positional versatility makes him incredibly valuable, especially to a team like the Loons that could use him to spell multiple players as they manage minutes. It also makes him somewhat challenging to benchmark. To wit:
On top is Just vs. attacking midfielders and central midfielders, on the bottom, Just vs. attacking mids and wingers.
He’s clearly still a good attacker when the wingers are brought into the control group, but the shine comes off a little bit. He’s a tweener: Talented enough to play in MLS, probably at a reasonably high level, but hard to value precisely.
The Loons have had that guy before and it worked out quite well. Robin Lod wasn’t an all-star every year, but he was consistently underrated even when he was being voted the most underrated player in the league. He was deployed all over the pitch and his impact ebbed and flowed because of that, but he was always contributing somewhere. Having a younger version of him would seem to be ideal.
So should the Loons sign Just?
On one hand, obviously yes. He’s a fairly inexpensive player, adds depth to the attack that Minnesota badly needs, and contributes in multiple ways depending on what the team needs. There’s almost no way the deal handcuffs Minnesota even if it goes very badly and it seems unlikely that it will go very badly.
On the other, I have concerns. Not with Just per se, I’m confident he can be a valuable player, but with how he might fit with the team. He’s a strong facilitator — his key passes are elite irrespective of comparison group — and his 14 goal contributions last season would put him on par with Joaquin Pereyra, but he isn’t a singular solution to Minnesota’s inconsistent attack and I worry that he’ll be brought in with that mantle on his shoulders.
If Minnesota bring in Just and a DP-caliber attacker, suddenly they look like a serious competitor in the west, especially since the team won’t suffer the intense drop in form from fatigue the way they did at the end of last season. At that point, they have multiple threats defenders must prepare for, multiple ways they can break down a defense, and if one combination isn’t working on a given night, they have the ability to change things up.
If Just is the only attacking addition, he’ll need to unlock someone on the current roster in addition to bringing his own value and that’s what I’m not seeing. He’s an outlet for Tomás Chancalay if he gets caught dribbling at two defenders, but only if Chancalay sees him as the trailing runner. He’s a link between the double pivot of Owen Gene and Nectarios Triantis and the attack, but both Gene and Triantis are more than happy to dribble into space to accomplish the same goal.
Does his passing help spacing against a team sitting back? Potentially, and that would be valuable. Does it free up Pereyra to be less of an orchestrator and more incisive with his passing and movement? Also possible. Am I grasping at straws? Pretty obviously yes.
The longer I look at his production in the SPL last year, where he was above the 90th percentile of all attacking midfielders in most of the relevant stats, the harsher it feels to say I only like Just as a contingent addition.
He’s good. He’d likely make the team better.
And yet, if he’s the only starting-caliber player that comes in, I struggle to see him single-handedly changing the trajectory of either this season or the sprint season to come in 2027.