Loons Find a Ceiling

Minnesota United faces their first opponent who asked them to create

Nothing about Minnesota United v Toronto is worth reliving and yet here I am on a Sunday morning, drinking my coffee and rewatching a drab 0-0 draw. Drab is a word for what turned out to be 90 minutes of watching Michael Boxall’s Sisyphysian effort to throw the ball into the box.

Here was the match up: Minnesota United—sitting close to the top of the West with their David Blaine attempt to magically win a soccer trophy while having never touched a ball—versus Toronto FC—a team abjectly terrible at soccer, whose stars are more concerned with whether or not they can vape in the locker room than they are with putting ball in net. I will say that given Toronto actually put in an effort against Miami last week that this game had high xBS rate, my own measure of how likely an absolutely batshit, unpredictable a result that a given MLS match will produce. Instead, we got that nil nil.

The match play itself doesn’t provide much to think about or celebrate, though the defense was yet again quite solid. What is worth thinking about, though, is that this match provided our first example of a challenge we knew was awaiting the Loons: what happens when the opposition forces Minnesota to play with the ball?

We should start with the premise that the system Loons play can and likely will suceed in most cases. It’s really original and Ramsay seems to be able to tweak it so far. And hey, look at us, we’re second in the West! However, there are two important caveats. 1. Loons have not yet beaten a top team (so let’s have a conversation after we play Vancouver, Austin, then Miami). 2. Teams that cede possession and let other teams control the tempo and tenor of the match may succeed over a season, but struggle in high-pressure, knockout games.

It’s this second caveat that interests me about the Toronto match, because—and Ramsay knows this— there are going to be games where the Loons have to adjust, step forward, and control a game more. What does it look like and how good are they at adjusting?

The Midfield

I was curious to watch who puts their foot on the ball and if we’re going to have more passes, who will be doing the passing?

If we compare the midfield from the 2-1 away win at NYC to this Toronto match, I was surprised at how little Lod had the ball inthe NYC match (this is an abberation from other matches, where he is actually doing a lot of the small midfield “glue-guy” passes). But really it’s Pereyra who is stepping into that role of advanced distributor. I really like Pereyra and think he’s turning out to be a fantastic part of the team.

But in the comparison, we see that most of the passes Pereyra added were lateral balls cycling through the midfield to unlock defense. He is also making far more passes in the opposition’s final third than anyone else. I think in part I’ve been ruined by watching Reynoso most recently because when I ask myself what it would look like to have a player unlock a defense, it looks like Reynoso’s absolute genius. Pereyra (and Lod) are not Reynoso, but they are going to be key to unlocking defenses. They need to be. (I don’t have a solution, just pointing out the obvious).

The Forwards

I wrote recently about the two forward system looking somewhat siloed: you have two guys who don’t necessarily playo off each other, but create alternate attacking nodes that occupy defenses and thus create space of the other. I think Yeboah in particular needs to step up in these chances. He’s the more creative of the two forwards and needs to be able to create more chances for himself.

I don’t think Yeboah’s lack of scoring in the last few games represents a slump because I think his silo draws attention and lets Tani score. So it isn’t a lack of scoring that worries me. In his first half season with the Loons last year there were a couple goals that Yeboah created with his own genius and Ramsay needs to figure out how to get more of that. In the second half Yeboah just looked tired (that said, reading striker body language is like reading tea leaves).

Here we have a really great opportunity that Yeboah conjures from pure desire, but we’ve seen this a couple times recently where he goes down far too easily.

I didn’t see much from Tani against Toronto, but he was up for the game. One of the only memorable moments from the game was Tani making a 30 yard run to close down the defense and win a foul.

The Changes

Ramsay did attempt a few changes during the match to try to change the shape and feel of the attack. Most notable was the addition of Shashoua for Wil Trapp. It’s unclear what the directions were here. At first, I thought it was inverting the triangle with Shashoua ahead of Lod an Pereyra rather than Trapp sitting behind the two. However, Shashoua whether by design or just impatience seemed all over the pitch. He was dropping back to the defense to bring the ball forward and then sitting behind the forwards.

I say because of design or impatience, because I am trying to always use the assumption that what I’m observing is by design. The first question is what are we observing? The second is why might they be doing that? And only then we can ask follow up questions like is it working?

In this case, maybe Shashoua operating in a more free role allows him to confuse Toronto’s tight midfield. Or maybe it allows more fluid, advanced movement for the other midfielders. I don’t think it worked in that the Loons didn’t really create better opportunities as the game went on. But it was the most significant change.

For all the nice depth of the Loons, I don’t think they have game changers off the bench. Sang Bin, even snake-bitten, is a dynamo of energy off the bench. But he, Shashoua, and Mesanvi (who I don’t think has shown much yet) are the only attacking substitutes. I don’t think any of them are going to really change the shape of a game.

I am really confident in what this team can produce this season and I think it’s going to be fun, but I think there are clear obstacles that they need to overcome if they’re going to take the next step, ifthye’re going to win a trophy.