Analysis: Why the West’s top teams are still giving Minnesota United fits

Last week, Major League Soccer took five days off, with no team activities for Minnesota United between Saturday’s loss to San Diego FC and a training session on Friday.

Here’s hoping the Loons enjoyed their five-day summer break, because the calendar is about to get crowded again. Beginning with Wednesday night’s home game against the Houston Dynamo, Minnesota has five games in the next 18 days — or six if you count the team’s friendly against Germany’s Holstein Kiel.

The Loons start the second half in decent shape. They’ve earned 30 points through 18 games, good enough for a tie for third place in the Western Conference.

That said, the Loons also have struggled to compete with the best in the West. They managed one point out of a possible six against first-place Vancouver, lost at home to second-place San Diego, and lost on the road at fourth-place LAFC — giving them one point out of a possible 12 against the top five teams in the West (having not played Portland yet).

It’s something of a callback to 2024, when the Loons played 14 matches against the five teams that finished above them in the Western Conference standings, and won only once in regulation.

And so they start the second half as a team that still has much yet to prove — including figuring out just what the team’s best offensive tactics look like.

Minnesota began the year with a pair of strikers up front, in Tani Oluwaseyi and Kelvin Yeboah. It was a sensible decision, to get as many minutes as possible for the team’s two most dangerous offensive players.

Then Yeboah went down injured, followed by Oluwaseyi leaving for international duty, meaning the Loons have now played almost as many games with the single-striker setup they used in 2024, rather than the new dual attack they debuted this season.

It’s fine, even desirable, for the team to have two different tactical setups that can be used given who’s available — but it has meant that Minnesota doesn’t seem to have quite figured out which team it is, offensively speaking.

Manager Eric Ramsay has spoken often about how, when the Loons are at their best, they’ll be methodical in building out from the back, with the two wingbacks heavily involved in making that happen. In practice, though, the Loons often seem to forget about any option except an immediate counter-attack, something that seems heightened when they have two strikers up front instead of one.

“It’s a really hard balance to strike,” said Ramsay. “We’ve got lots of players, as I’ve said before, who are very direct, very goal-orientated. On a lot of occasions, that really works for us. … The trade-off is that [in some cases] we turn the ball over a lot.

“That is the area in which we need to improve. We need to be what we are at our best, but we need to find a slightly better balance, and that’s something that we’re always talking about.”

The manager’s example of that better balance came in the Loons’ final game before the team lost players to their international teams, a 3-2 victory in Seattle that represented Minnesota’s first-ever away win against the Sounders.

Ramsay was careful to say that he wasn’t grabbing onto excuses in noting that losing four regular starters for the San Diego game meant his team took a couple of steps backward in that area.

“I think when you take someone like [goalkeeper] Dayne [St. Clair] out of the team ... you’re taking two steps backwards,” he said. “I would like to think that when we get the full contingent back, we can pick up where we left off.”

Struggles against top teams isn’t the only way the Loons are repeating 2024; while missing those starters, they began with a loss, a callback to last season’s June swoon.

“We don’t feel like we’re in that same place right now,” said midfielder Wil Trapp. “Every game’s winnable, but these are ones at home that we feel like can really set us up for a really good second half of the season.”

7:30 p.m., Wednesday at Allianz Field

TV; radio: Apple TV+ and MLS Season Pass; 1500 AM

Houston (5-8-5) isn’t exactly having a good few weeks. The Dynamo lost consecutive games at home, 3-1 in both matches, to Sporting Kansas City and Montréal — two of the five worst teams in MLS. The visitors will be missing do-everything playmaker Jack McGlynn to international duty, but Minnesota (8-4-6) will still be missing four starters for the same reason, including, and perhaps most importantly, goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair.