When Darius Randell made his Minnesota United first-team debut in the U.S. Open Cup in May, text messages lined up on Loons academy coach Justin Ferguson’s phone.
The theme: He did it!
At age 17, Randell became the youngest player in club history to score a goal for the top team, and the 1-0 win over Louisville City propelled the Loons in the national tournament. Then more milestones stacked up.
By the end of the May, Randell had signed a homegrown contract with the Loons through 2026, made his MLS debut in the 4-2 loss to San Diego at Allianz Field on June 14, and on Wednesday, took the field for a second cameo in a 3-1 win over Houston in St. Paul.
“It’s crazy how things work out,” Randell told the Pioneer Press.
For MNUFC, this is a big deal. The Loons have totaled only four homegrown players across nine MLS seasons.
Goalkeeper Fred Emmings was the first in 2020, but the 21-year-old St. Paul native hung up his gloves last year after suffering concussions. Forward Patrick Weah came next in 2021, but MNUFC declined his contract option last fall and the 21-year-old from Minneapolis has played in nine games for Atlanta United II in MLS Next Pro league. Defender Devin Padelford signed in 2022, but the 22-year-old from Maplewood has made only three MLS appearances for the Loons this season.
MNUFC’s academy suffered from its decision to shut down operations during the pandemic, resulting in an exodus of top players to other MLS systems. After a reboot, the club’s leadership feels as though its high-school age teams have been improving. Still, MNUFC needs to increase its number of homegrown players to provide a return on the investment in the academy and development team MNUFC2.
In addition, as a medium-sized market with perennially low spending on first-team player salaries, developing its own talent lessen would mean the Loons are less reliant on the draft and intraleague trades, and can save money on international transfer fees.
None of that, however, has affected Loons head coach Eric Ramsay’s decision to play Randell.
“It won’t be token-gesture minutes, nor minutes from the perspective of publicity around young players,” Ramsay said before Randell’s MLS debut two weeks ago.. “He can definitely go and make a mark.”
Randall has totaled only nine MLS minutes, so most of his ability at that level has only been on display in training sessions.
“I think probably the biggest compliment I can pay him is, if you were to ask most of the more-senior players which player they wouldn’t want to be one-v-one against in a big 20-by-20 space, it would be Darius,” Ramsay said. “I think that level of aggression with the ball, his athleticism, his change of pace (is) a really good starting point for a young player.”
Academy coach Ferguson had a similar first impression of Randell. Before joining MNUFC in 2021, Ferguson was a youth coach at Salvo in Woodbury when they played a Boreal team featuring a 14-year-old Randell.
“The ball went backwards off a kickoff,” Ferguson recalled. “Some kid picked up the ball, dribbled pretty much my whole team and scored. … (My) immediate reaction is kind of, ‘Who is that?’ ”
Freguson was then hired by MNUFC and worked to bring Randell and other Boreal standouts over to the Loons. Randell, who was born in Monrovia, Liberia, and moved to Brooklyn Park at age 11, initially joined the Loons’ Under-15 team in 2022. One of his earliest highlights came at the Generation Adidas Cup.
“He turned two Manchester United players inside out at the halfway line and played a ball in behind, and we ended up tying the game and winning on penalties,” Ferguson said.
The following year, Randell joined Ferguson’s U17s. The head coach challenged the young star.
Randell boiled the message from Ferguson down this way: “On U-15s, you could do whatever you want, you get the ball, just dribble through everybody and do whatever you want. But (on U-17s) I don’t think you’ll be the best player.”
“And that kind of hit me up: ‘OK. Let’s see about that,’ ” Randell added. “I didn’t take that as a bad thing. I do understand what he’s trying to say. Like, things is not gonna be easy, so I’ve got to keep working my way.”
As he continued to climb, Randell hit some growing pains with MNUFC2, including his first training session where new teammates were running and passing circles around him. Last year, Ferguson said Randell was deflecting to older, more-experienced teammates too much and needed to be more assertive.
Before his game-winning goal in the Open Cup, Randell wasn’t doing well in school and was told if he didn’t improve in the classroom, he wasn’t going to play. He did what was asked of him and after playing, he texted Anne Moelk, the club’s head of player well-being, to thank her for making him go to his tutoring lessons.
“It shows his character, but it also shows the support that he appreciates he’s getting,” Ferguson said.
While Randell has made it to the MLS team, he’s still a teenager living at home with his mother in St. Michael. He has a ton to still figure out and a lot riding on his shoulders.
“He’s not a finished product yet,” said Ferguson, now MNUFC’s head of methodology. “I think people expect these 17-year-olds to be kind of Lamine Yamal (the teen sensation for Barcelona and Spanish national teams) who just come on to the world, and they already have it. That’s really not the journey for the majority. (Randell is) going to come on and he’s going to continue to improve and grow into, hopefully, who he can become.”
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