The onus is on Minnesota United to show it hasn’t peaked for 2025.
The Loons were flying high after a 3-1 away win against frontrunner San Diego FC on Sept. 13, but then suffered the misery of losing the U.S. Open Cup semifinal 2-1 to Austin FC four days later, conceding a goal in the final minute.
Before that prime opportunity to win the club’s first trophy, MNUFC had transferred its best forward, Tani Oluwaseyi, to Villarreal in Spain for a club-record $9 million transfer fee in late August. And in that Open Cup loss, the Loons’ No. 2 striker Kelvin Yeboah suffered a hamstring injury.
Since then, MNUFC has one win in four matches going into their MLS Cup Playoffs first-round series against Seattle Sounders. Game 1 in the best-of-three is set for 8 p.m. Monday at Allianz Field.
“We had this high after San Diego, where, ‘Wow, we just beat the best team in the league — the best team in our conference. We’re three points away from (them),’ ” Loons midfielder Wil Trapp recalled to the Pioneer Press. “Then we have a (Cup) semifinal to potentially win and host the final (in St. Paul). And then when that kind of fell flat …”
The Loons were outplayed by then-last place L.A. Galaxy in a 2-1 loss in the regular-season finale, and head coach Eric Ramsay was asked if his team was going in the wrong direction headed into the postseason,
“You guys know the circumstances that we are working with at the moment,” Ramsay told reporters. “We look very different as a team from the perspective of what we have available at the top of the pitch. You would be hard pushed to find a team that would deal with losing its two No. 9s at a crucial point in the season and comfortably waltz through the rest of the season.
“We are a team that, unfortunately at this point in the season, is transitioning to an extent, and we’ve got to make sure that we find some solutions to the problems that we’ve got.”
Yeboah returned against the Galaxy, subbing on for the final 13 minutes. He had one touch in that stint and his fitness lagged. Without Oluwaseyi and Yeboah, the Loons have used Robin Lod, Joaquín Pereyra and Bongi Hlongwane. Pereyra has scored twice, but the others haven’t scored at all.
“You can’t overstate the fact that we kind of built this thing around Tani and Kelvin from the beginning,” Trapp said. “When those guys are not in there, it’s just different. That’s not saying that Joaquin and Rob in the past couple games haven’t been good. It’s just different.”
Trapp noticed a shift in Ramsay’s approach after the Open Cup loss. The first-time head coach usually conveys to his team in broad themes boiled down to a very concise, to-the-point message.
“I don’t want to say emotionless, but it’s specific,” Trapp explained. “Then, I think, at the Austin game, he was frustrated in the way we conceded the goals (and) you start to see that emotion — in a good way.”
Ramsay was “more targeted” in his criticisms. He was the same way postgame with reporters, in particular toward wingback Joseph Rosales allowing a runner in behind on Austin’s winning goal.
“We have to deal with that run off Joe’s shoulder better,” Ramsay said postgame. “It’s something that is very basic to the way that we defend. It’s something we talk about a lot. At that stage of the game, it’s a case of one player running more than another player and obviously at that stage of the game, that can’t happen.
“That is a case of us really letting ourselves down as a collective after what an effort it is to get to that point in the game. So, that will really hurt Joe. It will hurt the group. It’ll hurt us as staff. But we’ve got to get on with it.”
The Loons have home-field advantage against Seattle, but the seasoned Sounders will be hard to dispatch. In late August, Seattle won the Leagues Cup, going unbeaten against three teams from Mexico’s Liga MX and topping Lionel Messi and Inter Miami in the final in late August.
Coming out of the Open Cup semifinal, the Loons needed to rotate their squad after four players went the distance in 120-minute shifts, so there was a distinct reason for the ensuing 3-0 loss to Chicago. MNUFC then had a 1-1 draw against Colorado, followed by a 3-0 win over last-place Kansas City and the Galaxy defeat.
“They’re bright enough as a group of players to sort of know a lot of context wrapping around a couple of the defeats,” Ramsay said. “It’s a level-headed-enough group to sort of see it in the way that a coach would see it.”
The Loons have been, at best, treading water over the past month, and the veteran Trapp knows no one is going to throw them a life preserver.
“No one feels sorry for you,” he said. “No one feels sorry for this team.”
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