Analysis: Tale of two seasons for Loons ends in Western Conference semifinals

SAN DIEGO — There are two ways you can look at Minnesota United’s 2025 season.

On one hand, the team set a club record for points in a season and hosted a playoff round for the first time, in a full non-COVID season, since 2019.

The Loons beat Inter Miami. They beat San Diego. They beat Seattle — twice, plus twice more on penalty kicks in the playoffs. Their prowess from set pieces earned them worldwide recognition, and for the first time, it felt like the club had a distinct identity.

On the other hand, just like 2024, their season is over after the Western Conference semifinals. They again haven’t qualified for the Concacaf Champions Cup, which was viewed somewhat as a potential consolation prize for the season. And once again, they haven’t required the construction of a trophy case at team headquarters.

A good season, but not a final destination.

“I think that there’s certainly things to be proud of, and there’s certainly things [required] to take that next step,” said veteran Wil Trapp, who has played five full seasons in Minnesota. “We just have to turn a couple screws a little bit more. I think the defensive side of the ball this season was incredible. I think now it’s about how can we turn some of these chances into goals.”

Looking back on 2025, there’s really no way not to split the year into what came before the summer transfer window and what came after.

“I think we would always feel like we want to improve, particularly after the window that we had, and the loss of Tani,” said manager Eric Ramsay. “If we really want to compete with the very best teams, I think we have to improve and we have to push. I think we at the moment can compete in our way, but as you’ve seen over the course of the season, we can be in games, we can be really consistent, but we’re never comfortable, I wouldn’t say.”

It’s been two seasons, and really just one offseason in between, that the new MNUFC regime has been in place, from chief soccer officer Khaled El-Ahmad on down to Ramsay and his coaching staff. That they’ve been somewhat successful, with the league’s 26th-highest payroll and plenty of roster flexibility, is impressive.

But no one at the club will be happy to float along in the middle, finishing in eighth place and going out in the conference semifinals.

“Obviously, with where we are in the food chain, to have gone to the semifinal twice in two years, I think everyone’s really pleased with that,” Ramsay said. “Maybe you do that in five years, one of them, you might find your way all the way to the final. I think if you want to do it really consistently with more comfort, and evolve the style and evolve the level of dominance in games, then the squad will need to improve.”

Minnesota has built a team that’s filled with ambition, and put an ambitious coach at the head of it. The next step will be not only to add to that team, but also hold on to the players it already has – and escape their seemingly prescribed spot in the league pecking order.

The atmosphere was electric and the crowd was amazing.

For the league to add a team like San Diego, and then to see them go on and have such success in their expansion season, shows the growth of the league and the excitement of what it’s building.

The match was also played on a field that was in awful shape, since it had hosted a college football game two nights prior. It was bumpy, rutted, and the football lines were still clearly visible.

“What a brilliant environment, phenomenal crowd, what they’ve been able to achieve here in a year is almost beyond belief to an extent,” said Ramsay. “But the pitch is obviously questionable at this level, at this stage of a tournament.”

If anything, the field hurt San Diego more, given that they would prefer to keep the ball on the ground and play a short passing game — semi-impossible when the field, by the end of the night, appeared to have hosted a motocross race.