Analysis: Minnesota United manager Eric Ramsay sees his roster strategy justified

Losing to Houston in midweek was bad enough for Eric Ramsay and Minnesota United, after the manager made eight changes to the starting lineup, and his team lost to a struggling team.

It would have been worse if his team hadn’t come back three days later and beaten a different struggling — and less rested — squad.

“I felt like it justified that decision,” Ramsay said after the Loons defeated St. Louis City 3-0 Saturday night at Allianz Field. “I wanted to reserve judgment on how good the decision that was until the end of the day, but I feel like we went all-in on this game and ultimately we got what we certainly deserved but also planned for.”

Eight of the 10 St. Louis City outfield players were starting their third game in a week, against just two for the Loons — midfielder Wil Trapp and defender Jefferson Díaz. Neither Trapp nor Díaz had played the full 90 minutes in the first two games, either.

“I’m obviously learning my craft a little bit in terms of managing the MLS and the summer months and some of the things that we have to contend with,” Ramsay said. “Certainly squad management is one of those things and, yeah, we lost the game on Wednesday, but there’s miles in the legs now for players. I feel like hopefully we get a net positive, and we’ve come out of this week and we’re in good shape, and hopefully this helps us come out of the month in really good shape.”

Minnesota still has four games to go in this slog of playing nine matches in 30 days, but the pressure eases a bit. Wednesday is another U.S. Open Cup game, which may offer Ramsay the opportunity to get some more miles into the legs of players who haven’t played a lot of league games. And when that’s over, all Minnesota has left before a longer June break is a span of three league games in eight days — a pretty typical MLS midseason week.

The players weren’t looking forward to next week, though — they mostly wanted to atone for a Wednesday performance that left no one pleased.

“I don’t even think most guys knew they were winless in nine [games],” striker Tani Oluwaseyi said of St. Louis City. “For us, it was just a way of responding to how Wednesday went. We weren’t really satisfied with the effort that we put in on Wednesday. So today, the coach’s message to us was just make sure you respond.”

This was the third league game the Loons had played with their normal starting 11 since Kelvin Yeboah’s injury forced them to revert to playing with a central striker and two wide attacking midfielders, rather than three midfielders and two strikers.

Those three games have been two 3-0 wins and a 4-1 triumph.

Diplomatically, Oluwaseyi wasn’t ready to credit the shift for the success. “We were doing pretty well with the two up front, as well,” he said. But he also alluded to one of the benefits of the shift — it brings the attacking midfielders, in this case Robin Lod and Joaquín Pereyra, much more into the game and keeps the central striker high up the field.

“For us, playing with both of them means that I don’t really have to drop in as much because they’re both so mobile and they both are players who can get on the ball and make things happen,” he said. “It gives me the ability to stay up high and just focus on making runs in behind and just making life difficult for the center back. It’s been a good balance to even get Robin a little higher or get Joaquín a little higher — and you see what they’re doing in those positions when they get it.”

Oluwaseyi said playing as a central striker meant there was less emphasis on him dropping back and connecting play. “I think that’s one thing that we struggle with sometimes, connecting passes and moving it one side to the other,” he said.

Even as he was being diplomatic, though, he couldn’t help but enthuse a little bit about the day. “We’re playing some beautiful football,” he said.

Officially, it was nearly 90 seconds between the time Julian Gressel ran onto the field as a sub and when he was wheeling away in celebration after scoring his first goal in a Loons uniform.

With his family in the crowd, having come to St. Paul for the weekend, it felt to Gressel like the culmination of something a lot bigger than just a minute and a half of soccer. He’s freshly in Minnesota, signed in late April after being waived by Inter Miami.

“I think it was my first real touch of the ball, which, to be honest, is so poetic in a sense, that it happens on a night like tonight where my family’s here for the weekend,” he said. “You know, they’re leaving again and going to Florida. What has transpired over the last month hasn’t been easy for me personally, and tonight that it also happened on our mental health awareness [night] means even more.”

The Loons had fill-in-the-blank signs available at the game with the prompt “I put mental health first by [blank],” and Gressel was one of the Loons pictured on social media with his own sign, reading, “I put mental health first by checking in with myself every day to see how I am doing!”

“Last year I only scored one, so I’m already there this year, and I played 32 games last year,” Gressel said. “I’m feeling good. And like I said, just a lot of things came together.”