I have now completed my blazing funeral pyre reviewing the last seven years for the Loons. In part one of my Loons’ Heath Era evaluation I talked about my personal interaction with the club’s heel turn under Adrian Heath. In part two, I started to look at the sporting structure of the club and particularly the strategy of uncovering diamonds in the rough that has largely failed. For part three, I took on the quixotic attempts to find a striker that tortured the team. In part four, I looked more at the coaching side of things and tried to find the positives.
Now that I’ve buried the past, I am very, very pleased to be looking forward. Because for all my skepticism and criticism of how things went, I think that’s because I’m actually usually really optimistic about the club. I look at how things are and sure there are flaws, but I believe in the talent of players like Bongi, Lod, Reynoso, etc… And so maybe my criticism of the Loons ends up being too harsh because I have set too high of expectations. But here I am again, about to set too high of expectations and convince you that 2024 will kick ass for the Loons.
[I]KEA
The Loons made their first big move of the new era when they not only restructured their sporting side, but hired Khaled El-Ahmad to be the centerpiece of this new structure. I greatly criticized the ad hoc and disorganized arrangement of the sporting structure in that past. And the Loons opted for a very traditional structure going forward: a Chief of Soccer Operations will be the head of the pyramid, overseeing the scouting, the academy, and MNUFC/2 overall operations.
This is a much needed change. I would have advocated for an MLS stalwart like Chris Albright because I think it’s easier for a domestic expert to seek out foreign expertise. But hiring El-Ahmad is at the bare minimum, not a boring choice. There are plenty of tired recycled MLS suits and even if El-Ahmad interviewed with a ton of clubs before Minnesota United, his resume looks decent enough: CONCACAF & Scandinavia scout for City group and he helped put together the original NYCFC. This isn’t dropping a foreign guy into the deep end of MLS. I’m choosing to be pretty optimistic on what he can bring to the club.
I also waffle on what to make of the delay in his start date. As Andy Greder has reported, El-Ahmad won’t start with the Loons until July 2024 at the latest, but at the earliest he’s going to wait for his current club Barnsley to find his replacement. The Loons could have bought him out, but according to MNUFC’s President Shari Ballard, El-Ahmad didn’t want to leave Barnsley stranded, which sure makes him look like a decent person.
Of course, this means that the Loons are making their next biggest decision—the hiring of a head coach—without the guy who should be leading that process. El-Ahmad will be part of the head coach hire, but not leading it. I don’t know what to make of that situation. On it’s face, it really seems odd: the most important decision and the biggest chance for El-Ahmad to lay down his vision for the future is in hiring a head coach. That makes me suspect that El-Ahmad will still have a large role, but from a distance. I’m being charitable, perhaps, but I just can’t imagine him not reviewing and approving all the names moving into an interview stage. And I can’t imagine him not being present for the final interviews. And would he be the first person in history to get a new job and still be putting his energy into the old job?
Other decisions will be passed on to support staff, such as short-term contract decisions. I am far less concerned on how involved El-Ahmad is in these decisions. The decisions on bringing back Wil Trapp or Zarek Valentin aren’t meaningless, but the stakes are just a lot lower than head coaching or signing the 3-4 major pieces that the club needs in the offseason.
Where I think the team might suffer is delaying any major moves in the offseason. In a future post, I’ll talk about what I think the roster really needs, but the short preview is that I think the club needs only a couple (dare I say “2-3 more players) key acquisitions and then some depth pieces. But even if Barnsley hire a new boss and El-Ahmad is full time with Minnesota by January (highly optimistic) is that enough time to identify and feel comfortable signing top end talent?
El-Ahmad obviously wouldn’t be coming to the club with a blank slate and I am sure he went into his interviews with the club saying “here are they types and names of some players who would start to lead us in the new direction.” But I am suspicious that the infrastructure and attention will be there to bring in a top level centerback (a tough position to fill) or defensive midfielder. So will the team instead opt for continuing a band-aid approach of finding a crop of players and hoping a few of them work out? That is a pretty legitimate concern and I think our first indication of how all of this will affect the first half of 2024 is whether we see a DP signing ths winter (I highly doubt it).
Head Coach
The next significant question for the club is what kind of coach can bring stability and measured success for the short- and medium-term future. A lot of times in my podcasting days questions would come in: who would you hire instead of Heath? And at various times there were great and very obvious options.
Last season, for example, it was obvious that Wilfried Nancy was a completely undervalued and superb coach in Montreal. Sure enough, Columbus Crew picked him up and Bob’s your uncle, the Crew are sailing through the playoffs. This season there might not be the same obvious target, but there certainly are categories of coaches out there that stand out.
Before I get to those categories, we should actually set out what the club has going for it and what we actually need. Minnesota United is 100% built around an extremely talented player who has “(*Liam Nieson voice*) a very specific set of skills.” You could put Pep Guardiola or Sam Allardyce in charge of the club and that ball is running through Reynoso and he is not going to defend. A new head coach might opt for full backs who bomb forward or stay home, but no matter what they’ll have an old-school, saunter-around the midfield Number Ten. And probably the only other immediate constraint is that for now Pukki is the lockdown number nine and his age and skill set means you need to adjust for what he can and can’t do.
This helps us get to the question of: do you want a hyper tactical coach? A vibes-centric coach? A stultifying, defensive coach? A Red Bull hyper-pressing coach? Right now, I lean toward a vibes-centric, loose attacking coach. I don’t see a St Louis or Red Bull set of tactics working in Minnesota: those tactics emphasize intensity, running, and pressing to force mistakes. I also think that you can X and O the hell out of a tactics board, but Reynoso is going to Reynoso and so trying to get Miles Davis to play 4/4 time might not be the best match.
The shortlist of criteria I’m going with is:
Makes soccer fun.
Can utilize and maximize Reynoso
Can utilize and maximize the squad depth
Has enough tactical nous for Plan B when Rey is injured, chilling with lawyers, isn’t at his best.
(To say something quickly about #1, I spent my first Heath Era review on this issue and obviously it means a lot to me. When my team wins, I want to feel happy. I don’t want a coach ruining all joy by making it about himself. I also want a team to play with freedom and joy.)
I think Heath was heavily a vibes-based coach who had a pretty set plan for how he wanted to see matches played and trusted his players to cook in the kitchen. When they cooked, they cooked. When they didn’t, he didn’t have a recipe on hand. So I think I’m looking for a coach with the second part there (and his ability to utilize and maximize squad depth).
Tom Bogert recently published the list of coaches interviewed for the Portland Timbers job. The Timbers have since—thank DETHLOON—chosen Phil Neville, thus saving Minnesota fans from being saddled with him.
It’s something of a lackluster list. All of the candidates are to varying degrees MLS veterans and none of them really have had success. Robin Fraser is perhaps the most interesting hire as I don’t know how much he is to blame for not succeeding in the dilapidated strip mall of the Colorado Rapids.
Gio Savarese is one of the bigger names available and was also the coach that the Loons passed on for Heath because the team wanted to go the cheaper option. Whereas in years past, I would have advocated for our erstwhile rival, I have changed my mind on this lately. His style in Portland emphasized organization and grinding down games. I just don’t see him bringing out the best in Reynoso or his natural style working with the current team’s set up.
Another name that someone brought to my attention was long, longtime MLS veteran Dom Kinnear. Kinnear is an old school, “I’m gettin’ too old for this shit” type manager. His appointment would not inspire even the most enthusiastic puppy dog. That said, part of me wonders if maybe what the team needs is a hyper-pragmatic head coach who gets the most out of the Ethans Finlay or Wils Trapp of the world and then just patting his star on the back and saying “go do what you do best, kid!” Just to be clear this is only an idle curiosity on my part and I do not actually want to test its viability.
There are a million coaches out there, most of whom I’ve never heard of. I could say “Loons should hire recently fired Union Berlin boss Urs Fischer” just as easily as I could tell someone “of course you should ask that person out who is obviously way out of your league.” It’s fun to dream big.
I would also hope that the finalist list is far more creative than the lists I’m seeing associated with other openings. I hope I don’t know the names of all the finalists. I hope there are guys like Jimmy Thelin (overperforming for years with IF Elfsborg in Sweden), Nordsjaelland’s young manager Johannes Thorup, or legendary Argentinian Fernando Gago is out at Racing Club. Literally any of us can google for a bit and come up with a list of names and say “Is this something?” The point being here that there are a ton of potential managers who are more interesting than Caleb Porter.
There is also a long list of lower division coaches who absolutely deserve a shot in MLS. Former Loon Danny Cruz has created a dynasty in Louisville. Sacramento Republic’s Mark Briggs has been very successful, including a great Open Cup run in 2022. These are the kinds of coaches that represent more of a gamble than perhaps Robins Fraser or Doms Kinnear of the world, but there’s also a part of me that just wants a fun gamble. Sure man, let’s put Timmy in charge of the class for a day.
If you had to ask me what head coaches I really want, though, it’s absolute vibes-based xDawg manager. Absolutely no one should put me in charge of hiring a head coach, but if I were in that hiring room, I would say what this team needs is hearthrob Step-Dad, Luchi Gonzalez. I should say former Minnesota Thunder legend, (1 season, but whatever) Luchi Gonzalez.
Your riposte that he never really succeeded in Dallas or San Jose falls upon deaf ears. If you ask me what this team needs, I’ll tell you it’s a couple of key signings and somebody who can holler aural ketamine (EDIT: I have been informed that I know nothing about drugs and I should say “amphetamine” here) into the squad to make them all play with the Kool-Aid Man abandon of Bongokuhle Hlongwane. It’s someone who can command the respect of Reynoso (can Luchi? I don’t know) and get him to rise to the occasion in the big games. It’s also someone who can see when Reynoso is struggling and put in a less talented player who will still achieve within the system. Now, are the Loons going to pony up to buy up a non-star head coach like Luchi? I don’t think so, but I’ll dream about it.
I should now clarify that I’m being ridiculous here to get to my final points here. First, there is no immediate free agent “must-sign coach” (though quite a lot of “please don’t sign this bozo” coaches). Second, I would then hope the final candidates to be out of the box and not just the same recycled names. Third, that manager needs to e able to work with limited resources, particularly in the first season.
Each of us could throw out names that hits my criteria, but I’ll turn this to the audience: am I missing other criteria? What other coaches stand out?