- THE CEILING IS THE ROOF: As a team that began the season with four losses and has now gone unbeaten in six, you don’t have to tell Minnesota United about streaks and how they can turn on a dime. Much of what has gone into the unbeaten streak is the performance of forward Adrien Hunou and winger Franco Fragapane, but getting Bakaye Dibassy back is likely just as much of a key. Game by game, the chemistry on the pitch is building and that in turn is building the solidity and consistency. A good team is a lot like a good sauce: it’s not just the ingredients you put in, it’s about the patience to let them simmer and thicken. Tyler Miller’s excellent performance in goal — including a frankly hilarious 0.33 goals against average — provides the base, but the pairing of Dibassy and Michael Boxall enriches the defensive acumen of the team immeasurably, allowing more leeway for the fullbacks to step up and for Wil Trapp to do more work distributing and for Hassani Dotson to range farther up the field. The frontline’s willingness to do some of the dirty work of defending helps as well. The key question going forward towards the halfway point of the season becomes how good can they be? And maybe just as importantly, are they willing to do what it takes to not just get the win game to game, but to push themselves past their own expectations? If they become content with good enough, unbeaten streaks can turn back into losing streaks in the blink of an eye.
- CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE, SHAKE WELL: Speaking of streaks, the Quakes are on a rough jag. Winless is seven — including a 5-0 thrashing by Orlando City — San Jose and Head Coach Matias Almeyda have got to be desperate to right the ship and are likely not relishing the task of doing it against Adrian Heath and his men. Since 2019, the Loons have won every game they’ve played against the Quakes across all competitions, including a 4-1 win in the quarterfinals of the MLS Is Back Tournament. In those games, MNUFC have scored 15 goals to San Jose’s four. Of course, because this is MLS, you can’t discount the possibility that the sure thing gets flipped on its head and somehow the Quakes come into Allianz Field and drop four goals unanswered. But whatever the result on the day, it’s clear that things are getting shaken up in Silicon Valley. On Wednesday, the Quakes parted ways with general manager Jesse Fioranelli and while Almeyda and his coaching staff remained intact, the reverberations are sure to be felt throughout the organization. Almeyda’s aggressive man-marking scheme has been a joy to watch when it’s clicked and something of a disaster when it hasn’t — the Earthquakes have been on the wrong end of several multi-goal clean sheets over the last few years. Maybe that was always going to be the way with a high-risk, high-reward style, but it’s also true that San Jose have not gone big in terms of acquiring players who can make the most of the approach. It seems like it’s time for the team to get active in the second transfer window and then use the rest of the season as a litmus test for whether Almeyda’s vision can do more than impress on an intermittent basis.
- DON'T CHANGE THE CHANNEL, HASSANI DOTSON WILL BE RIGHT BACK: With midfielder Robin Lod in Finland and defender Romain Metanire in France as they pursue their green cards, the good news for MNUFC is that soon they won’t take up valuable international slots on the roster. The bad news is that it’s likely they’re in Finland and France. Thus far, the Loons have managed without Lod as Niko Hansen has stepped in on the right wing and done a good job. While Lod will bring a bit more vision and his predilection for cutting inside and using his left foot, Hansen has provided enough attacking nous on the right wing to keep defenses from collapsing on Fragapane and Emanuel Reynoso on the left. The tougher question will be who fills in on the right side of the defense in Metanire’s absence. Jukka Raitala is back from international duty and should be available, but he is more of a left back than a right back. The other option is Dotson, who we saw shift out to right back towards the end of the game against Portland. It’s a position he’s comfortable playing and he brings excellent attacking instincts as an overlapping fullback. While the midfield partnership between Trapp and Dotson has looked good, the return of Jan Gregus should allow Heath to move Dotson o that fullback spot. Heath really values Dotson’s contributions and ideally would like to keep him on the field if possible in whatever role he can play, so look for Gregus and Trapp in the double pivot and Dotson on the right side of the backline to be the most likely tweak to the lineup.
