Minnesota United vs. FC Cincinnati

When: 3:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Allianz Field
Stream: Apple TV
Radio: KSTP-AM, 1500
Weather: 18 degrees, overcast, 8 mph south wind
Betting line: MNUFC plus-105; draw plus-265; Cincinnati plus-210

Form: MNUFC (0-0-1, 1 point) earned a 2-2 draw with Austin FC in the season opener after Kelvin Yeboah scored in the 90th minute last Saturday. Cincinnati (1-0-0, 3 points) got two second-half goals for a 2-0 win over Atlanta United last week.

Big question: Will the stars play?

MNUFC midfielder James Rodriguez completed his first full week of training this week and head coach Cameron Knowles said the Colombian star will be available to make his MLS debut. Knowles said James’ first game for Minnesota is not inevitable this weekend and his possible role will be determined by how the game plays out and what it needs. A role off the bench seems likely.

Cincinnati midfielder Evander subbed out of the season opener with an apparent hamstring injury, but coach Pat Noonan didn’t rule out the one-named Brazilian for this weekend.

Context: It will be one of the coldest home games in Loons’ history, and Knowles knows his team needs to gives fans a reason to bundle up and endure the weather.

“One, to be very difficult to breakdown, and two, to entertain,” Knowles said. “… It’s going to be cold. We want to give them energy as much as they give it to us.”

Check-in: For late February, Allianz Field’s natural grass surface got positive reviews from Knowles and captain Michael Boxall.

“The pitch is in fantastic condition considering the time of year,” Knowles said.

Comment: Knowles expressed support for former Loons manager Eric Ramsay, who was fired by West Bromwich Albion earlier this week. Ramsay was winless in nine total games for the club in the English second-tier.

“He’s a fantastic person and obviously a fantastic coach and hopefully his next opportunity is a good one for him,” Knowles said.

Scouting report: The Loons conceded two goals last week — one on a corner kick and one on a back-post finish. They will need to clean up the defensive issues against striker Kevin Denkey. The former Cercle Brugge player had 15 goals in MLS last season and one already this campaign.

Prediction: Cincinnati finished second in the MLS’ overall standings last season and appears ready for another top-tier season. But what the heck, let’s predict pure cinema: Minnesota gets a winning-goal contribution from James’ left foot in crunch time. Loons win 2-1.

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Minnesota’s two D’Amico & Sons restaurants, the last remnants of a family of fine-dining and casual Italian restaurants that changed the Twin Cities dining scene, are closing next month.

The final day for the restaurants, in Edina and Golden Valley, will be March 28.

The closures come as brothers Richard and Larry D’Amico focus more on their restaurants in Florida, according to a statement from the company.

D’Amico Hospitality, the restaurants’ catering arm, will continue in Minnesota, though it will be led only by longtime partner Paul Smith, not the D’Amico brothers themselves.

D’Amico & Sons at one time had more than half a dozen locations in the Twin Cities, including one on Grand Avenue that closed in 2019.

The concept first opened in Minneapolis in 1994 as a fast-casual counterpart to the company’s more upscale restaurants, which included now-closed spots D’Amico Cucina and Café & Bar Lurcat in Minneapolis and Campiello in Eden Prairie.

Many prominent names in the Twin Cities restaurant scene got their starts at D’Amico restaurants, including Smack Shack founder Josh Thoma, who also co-owns Bay Street Burger Dive and reopened The Lexington about a decade ago, and former La Belle Vie chef Tim McKee, who in 2024 helped Forepaugh’s get back off the ground.

“We extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who enjoyed our family’s Italian dishes,” company leaders said in a statement.

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DENVER — Renee Good loved sparkles and laughter and any excuse for a celebration. She loved pretty much everyone she met, and was late for pretty much everything.

“She had this way of making you feel special and loved that I didn’t even understand that until we lost her,” Donna Ganger said Friday of her daughter, who was shot and killed by an immigration officer during the federal crackdown in Minneapolis.

She was “slow to anger, quick to love, quick to care,” said her father, Tim Ganger. “That’s the essence of who she was.”

Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot and killed Jan. 7 as immigration agents surged through the Minneapolis area, sparking waves of protests. Her death and that of another protester, Alex Pretti, just weeks later sparked outrage across the country and calls to rein in immigration enforcement. Good and Pretti were both U.S. citizens.

Good’s parents and two of her brothers, Brent and Luke Ganger, met AP journalists Friday in Denver for a long interview.

“It’s going to be hard in the future,” Donna Ganger said. “It’s going to be kind of a constant pain.”

Good, who graduated from college later in life, was volunteering in a local school district and working as a substitute teacher when she was killed, her parents said.

“She was working so hard to get her education, and then she was finally able to use it, and I could just tell how happy she was and how fulfilled,” Donna Ganger said.

Her family said they hoped her death, and how they spoke about her life, would help inspire change in a polarized country.

The family is “a very American blend,” Luke Ganger said in testimony to Congress. “We vote differently, and we rarely completely agree on the finer details of what it means to be a citizen of this country.”

Yet “we have always treated each other with love and respect,” he said.

Perhaps, they said Friday, they can inspire others to get along as they do.

“Our purpose through this whole tragic, difficult, unbelievable time, is to have something good come out of this,” Tim Ganger said. “Otherwise the senselessness of this is overwhelming.”

On the morning of the shooting, as immigration raids and protests were flaring across the city, Good’s partner, Becca Good, has said they had stopped their car in the street to support neighbors during an immigration operation.

Video shows Renee Good in a red SUV blocking part of the road and repeatedly honking her horn.

Two immigration officers get out of a truck and one orders Good to open her door. She reverses briefly, then turns the steering wheel as the officer says again, “get out of the car.” Almost simultaneously, Becca Good, standing in the street shouts, “drive, baby, drive!”

When Good begins pulling forward, an ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and fires at least two shots into the car, killing Good.

Good, her 6-year-old son and her partner — the women were not legally married, according to a family lawyer, but referred to one another as wives — had only recently relocated to Minneapolis from Kansas City, Missouri, settling a quiet residential street in a tight-knit neighborhood known for its activism.

In social media accounts, Good described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom.” A profile picture posted to Pinterest shows her smiling and holding a young child against her cheek, along with posts about tattoos, hairstyles and home decorating.

Amid the federal immigration raids in Minnesota to start this year, Minnesota United remained quiet on the subject. Loons supporters, which might be the most-progressive fanbase in Minnesota, took notice.

On Jan. 28, MNUFC posted on X: “Officially 1 month until the Home Opener!” And longtime, diehard fan Bruce McGuire replied: “Great. Now make a loud bold statement demanding ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) leave Minnesota immediately!”

That singular statement from the club never arrived over the month leading up to the Loons’ first game in St. Paul this season. MNUFC plays FC Cincinnati at 3:30 p.m. Saturday at Allianz Field.

MNUFC will have a pre-match moment of silence for Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were shot and killed by federal agents in January. The Loons plan to honor others in the community during the game and supporters in The Wonderwall will have a display banner with a message on the subject.

CEO Shari Ballard said the club thought a lot about how it might respond to the ICE raids and he explained to the Pioneer Press her rationale to not issuing a statement. It includes a perspective of a “No. 1 priority” in trying to keep those within her organization safe.

Ballard didn’t want to share specifics but said a few members of the club dealt with “real issues” involving Operation Metro Surge, which had families “legit scared to death.”

“I think it is impossible for people to understand truly what it was like at the height of it — and in certain ways how it still is —unless you’ve been in the community,” Ballard said.

“I also know that you have wider degrees of freedom as an individual, in a context, to try to impact it in whatever way you feel is best,” she continued. “Either sort of behind the scenes quietly supporting your neighbors and help them get groceries and help them pay their rent and do things that you do when you’re trying to take care of people and publicly speaking out to try to draw attention to it and to get it to stop.

“You don’t, in my view, have those same degrees of freedom when you’re responsible for an entire organization — employees, players and their families, academy players and their families.”

The makeup of MNUFC’s rosters, from the MLS squad to its youth academy ranks, are the most diverse in Minnesota’s pro sports.

Ballard was one of 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies to sign onto a statement on Jan. 25, the day after Pretti died in Minneapolis. “With yesterday’s tragic news,” the joint statement said, “we are calling for an immediate de-escalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.”

Ballard, a former leader at Best Buy before joining United in 2021, said she didn’t think a statement from the club was “going to solve anything.”

“There will be people that agree with it; there will be people that don’t. There will be people that said it goes too far; other people say it doesn’t go far enough,” she said. “It just would add to the volatility. And I don’t want to I don’t want to (put a) target on anybody.”

Ballard offered her own counter-argument. “If nobody says anything in a situation like that, does it just keep going on?” she asked. “I think the answer to that is yes.”

Once the whistle blows for the home opener Saturday, new Loons head coach Cameron Knowles knows his team has a responsibility to help the community.

“Our game is the best of accepting people from all around the world and different cultures,” said Knowles, a New Zealand native. “You see it in our locker room, you see it in the stands. And I think that should be a celebration of the globalism of our game. It’s certainly a responsibility for us for that 90 minutes to bring joy to the community and to represent the community in the way that we play, the effort that we put into the game, understanding that there has been real heaviness over the city for a little while.”

Briefly

The Loons were scheduled to play an international friendly against Werder Bremen later this season, but the top-tier German club pulled out of the exhibition last week, in part, due to safety concerns in traveling to Minnesota.  “We got another international friendly we’re working on, so we will have one for sure,” Ballard said.