Minnesota United waited almost eight years to get a regular-season win at Sporting Kansas City.
What’s another couple of hours to wait?
The Loons had to sit through a near-two-hour weather delay due to thunderstorms that hit Children’s Mercy Park at halftime. They had to survive Sporting Kansas City thundering a penalty off the crossbar in the final minute of the game. But when the sky cleared, they’d done something the franchise had never done before: take all three points in Kansas City.
A second-half goal from Kelvin Yeboah, plus an insurance goal in stoppage time from Bongokuhle Hlongwane, gave the Loons a 2-0 win.
“We weren’t in any way dominant in the game,” said manager Eric Ramsay. “But what you saw at the end was a group of players that are desperate to put the points on the board that are required to do what we want to do this year. And I think it’s another big step forward — albeit in a different way to the way in which I would have liked it to be a step forward.”
Minnesota came into the game with an 0-9-0 record in Kansas during the regular season, though MNUFC did win a playoff game in 2020, a memorable 3-0 victory.
The result meant that not only did Minnesota clinch a perfect three-win season against their nearest Western Conference rivals, they knocked SKC out of the playoff race. Against Sporting KC, St. Louis City, and San Jose, the bottom three teams in the Western Conference, the Loons are a perfect 6-0-0 this year; against the other ten teams in the West, Minnesota is 3-9-5.
It took one of the newest Loons to break the deadlock. Kelvin Yeboah carried the ball into the SKC penalty area, did a couple of stepovers, cut inside a defender, then placed a shot inside the far post for the game’s first goal in the 65th minute.
It was Yeboah’s fifth goal in his first five games as a Loon, a remarkable scoring streak for one of Minnesota’s two new Designated Players.
“There is always that Designated Player focal point,” said Ramsay. “If you bring in someone like Kelvin as a number nine, approaching his peak, someone who wants to come in and make a real mark, use this as a step, then that is what you expect from him. “
It was also an exceptional defensive performance from Minnesota’s back line, especially Michael Boxall, who was immense in the center – while playing in between two other center backs, Jefferson Díaz and Carlos Harvey, he’d never partnered with before. Boxall and company defended nine corners and survived 19 attempted SKC shots, but helped hold the home team to just four shots on target.
The exception was Miguel Tapias, who came into the game for Díaz with 15 minutes to go. Tapias’s wild attempt at a tackle on SKC’s Memo Rodrigues led to a penalty kick for the home team in the 90th minute of the match. Willy Agada, though, tried to hit the top corner with his penalty, and instead smacked the crossbar.
Three minutes later, Robin Lod slipped a pass to Hlongwane behind the KC defense, and with all sorts of time, Hlongwane made no mistake, scoring his team-leading 11th goal – and his fourth in four games.The game was 0-0 at halftime, and despite the two second-half goals, Ramsay wasn’t too pleased with his team’s performance.
“I must say, I don’t think we really got going after that break,” he said. “I think we ended up finding ourselves defending very deep. We looked pretty lethargic. We weren’t able to get good pressure on the ball and build pressure in the way that we wanted to do so.”
The win gave Minnesota a seventh road victory this season, a club record, and a third win in four. It also helped them keep pace in the Western Conference playoff race; the Loons are five points ahead of FC Dallas for the final playoff spot, with four games to play, and trail the Portland Timbers for eighth place – and the right to host the wild-card game – by only two points.
The standings, though, felt less important than the accomplishment. For Loons fans, finally taking home the points from a trip to Kansas City was far more valuable than just adding three points to the playoff chase.
