Minnesota United’s loss to Houston on Wednesday night came in the second of four consecutive weeks in which the Loons will play both in the middle of the week and on the weekend.
It’s a schedule that would test any squad, and Minnesota manager Eric Ramsay’s solution for dealing with it so far is simple: Play two separate teams, one in midweek and one on the weekend.
“The approach that we took this week was that we were going to play tonight and Saturday with what is, in effect, two different groups, and make sure that we have real freshness and we’re really sensible in terms of how we balance the week and how we start to think about this month as a whole,” Ramsay said.
Minnesota started an entirely different lineup the previous Wednesday against Louisville City in the U.S. Open Cup, and made eight changes between Saturday’s game against Miami and Wednesday’s game in Houston. Julian Gressel was the only player to play in all four games, and they were his first four games of the season — plus he was a substitute in two of them.
The separate-squad system might have worked against second-division Louisville, but it didn’t work against first-division Houston, no matter how far down the standings the Dynamo started the game. The Loons lost 2-0, and were never really in the match. At one point, Minnesota had one attempted shot for the night, while Houston had two goals on the scoreboard.
Despite that, Ramsay said he didn’t regret making so many changes for Wednesday. “I think this is this is one of those places that you come to where you feel like, even with what is on paper your strongest team … I think there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get spark, energy, any real intensity, particularly after the experience we had on Saturday,” he said.
“I think with that considered, with the conditions here, the context here, the fact that we did what we did on Saturday against Miami, I think on balance it was a justified way of looking at this game, and I don’t in hindsight feel like had I done anything distinctly different we would necessarily have got a different outcome.”
The Loons now face the curiosity of back-to-back home games against the same team, with an MLS game Saturday against St. Louis City, followed by a Wednesday U.S. Open Cup game against the same team. Ramsay will almost certainly approach those games the same way, with a much-rotated team playing in the U.S. Open Cup and a stronger team playing in the weekend home games on either side of it.
