Seven months.
That’s how long
Minnesota United FC
had between last August’s announcement that they’d start play in MLS in 2017 and their season opener on March 3 at Portland.
That’s not a lot of time to construct a roster, hire a coach and build a technical staff, even if general manager Manny Lagos had an idea before the news came down last summer that the Loons would be in MLS this year.
The result? A half-baked opening day squad that was embarrassed in their first month in the league. Minnesota lost their opener 5-1 at Portland, suffered a brutal 6-1 home defeat to Atlanta in Week 2, and, after a respectable 2-2 draw at Colorado, lost big again in Week 4, falling 5-2 at New England.
The loss to Atlanta cost Minnesota the most capital. Fair or not, the two expansion partners will be measured against each other all year, and the teams stood in stark relief on that snowy Sunday in Minneapolis. Atlanta’s young, high-priced attack laid waste to the Loons, with Designated Players
Josef Martinez
and
Miguel Almiron
combining for five goals and completely exposing Minnesota center back
Vadim Demidov
, one of the club’s highest-profile acquisitions and then-captain.
The takes came in hot after the Atlanta bloodbath: Minnesota, I and many others said, would be among the worst teams in MLS history in 2017. Pretty much no one outside of the Land of 10,000 Lakes mentioned the fact that the Loons had just over half a year to build their MLS roster, while Atlanta had nearly three years to prepare after being announced as a 2017 expansion team in April 2014.
That’s not to say Minnesota can put all the blame for their historically bad start on their short turnaround from NASL to MLS. It’s still early, but it’s already clear that they whiffed on Demidov, and their two other TAM signings –
Francisco Calvo
and
Rasmus Schuller
– were uneven to start the year. They also, in a move designed to maintain maximum roster flexibility this summer and next offseason (more on that later), decided against springing for any Designated Players.
Lagos, for his part, isn’t trying to hide from any of that.
“When you have to bring that many player in in that short of a time period, you’re not going to get all of the right guys that are going to fit for this group, this team and for MLS,” he told me on Thursday morning. “So that becomes a stress, and how do you deal with it, how do you react to it?”
The answer? Very well. Lagos, head coach Adrian Heath and a tweaked roster appear to have gotten things on track over the last month. Since their brutal 0-3-1 start that saw them outscored 18-6, Minnesota have gone 2-1-1 with a plus-1 goal differential in their last four games. Their only loss in that stretch came at league leaders FC Dallas, a match they were competitive in, and their draw was at Houston, who have won each of their other four home contests.
The arrivals of veterans
Sam Cronin
and
Marc Burch
from Colorado in exchange for
Mohammed Saied
and
Josh Gatt
have played a major role in their recent turnaround. The moves increased Minnesota’s overall quality and significantly upped their MLS knowhow. Together with the new center back pairing of Calvo and NASL holdover
Brent Kallman
, who have started together in each of the Loons’ last four games, Cronin and Burch have done plenty to turn the Loons’ backline from miserable to tolerable.
They won’t be the only additions Minnesota makes this season, either. Perhaps the only positive of the club’s underdeveloped opening day roster was that it gave Lagos a good deal of flexibility to change things come summer. He plans on taking advantage of that room to maneuver, even saying that the club are open to adding a DP – Minnesota are the only club in MLS currently without one – in the summer transfer window.
“We really want to make sure we’re getting the right player for the right reasons, in the right position and for the right salary,” Lagos said. “As we get to the summer window here, we’ll look at the next month and we’ll see really what we are, what we have and what we don’t.
“If that means a DP, great. If that means different types of players, that’s great as well.”
Minnesota haven’t spent anywhere near to the degree of Atlanta and they haven’t had as much success as their expansion partner, but they also had a lot less time to prepare for their inaugural MLS campaign. Just like they deserve some blame for their poor start, they deserve some credit for being proactive – and successful – in improving early in the year.
They also deserve some time. Atlanta are the exception for expansion teams, only two of which – the 1998 MLS Cup and US Open Cup-winning Chicago Fire and 2009 Seattle Sounders – have ever made the playoffs. Minnesota know they’re a long way from the MLS elite, but, with the team hovering around the red line and boasting the flexibility to make more improvements, they’re not exactly 2005 Chivas USA, either. Lagos, Heath and Co. aren’t satisfied, but they’re feeling much better about their team heading into Saturday’s winnable home match against San Jose. The rest of us should be, too.
“To me, we’re in a good spot,” Lagos said. “When I look at our roster and how we’re trying to build it and how we’re trying to spend money to build it, I think long-term, we’re all really excited about where things are going and where things are headed with this group.”
