Loons sporting director, players expect friendlies vs. Mexican teams to build their fan support

When Min­ne­so­ta Unit­ed faces Atlas FC at 7:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, ex­pect a bit of a dif­fer­ent crowd.

The match against the Mexi­can club on the Loons' home turf at TCF Bank Stadium might end up look­ing just as much black and red as black and blue.

"It's a dif­fer­ent vibe on those games be­cause so many fans will come to sup­port the oth­er team as well as our nor­mal sea­son tick­ets and our nor­mal crowd," Unit­ed for­ward Chris­tian Ra­mir­ez said. "It's al­most like a neu­tral site at times be­cause you have their crowd in cer­tain areas that are re­al­ly sup­port­ive and going crazy for their play­ers and then you have ours."

The Loons have a lot of ex­peri­ence play­ing in­ter­na­tion­al friend­lies. This will be the fourth con­sec­u­tive sea­son Unit­ed has matched up with a Mexi­can team.

In 2014, the Loons drew 1-1 with the Mexi­can U-21 team and drew 8,059 at the National Sports Center. In 2015, the game against top-di­vi­sion team Club Leon with 9,388 in at­tend­ance at the NSC end­ed in an­oth­er 1-1 draw. Last sea­son an­oth­er match­up with Leon end­ed in a 4-2 loss with 18,505 fans at Target Field.

This time around, Unit­ed is es­ti­mat­ing an at­tend­ance close to its Ma­jor League Soccer av­er­age of 19,960, with big walk-up sales ex­pect­ed.

Unit­ed Sport­ing Director Man­ny La­gos said net­work­ing and de­vel­op­ing con­tacts with­in the soc­cer world is what makes friend­lies like this pos­si­ble. He said there's "no doubt" that match­es like these bring in a di­verse crowd.

Fans of the Mexi­can na­tion­al team and Liga MX have a rep­u­ta­tion of turn­ing out to sup­port Mexi­can play­ers and teams. For ex­am­ple, when Unit­ed played the Los An­ge­les Galaxy and Mexi­can na­tion­al team mem­ber Giovani dos San­tos on May 21, the 19,107 fans in at­tend­ance were the most since the home o­pen­er.

Ra­mir­ez said when dos San­tos scored in that match, there was a big roar from a cer­tain sec­tion of the crowd. Same when he en­tered or left the pitch from the tun­nel.

Atlas also sports a big-name play­er in de­fend­er Rafael Mar­quez. La­gos put him in the top 10, if not top five, all-time a­mong Mexi­can play­ers. Ra­mir­ez said Mar­quez is "one of the, if not the best" Mexi­can play­er ever.

"I'm al­read­y hear­ing lot of La­ti­no, His­pan­ic peo­ple are going to come down to the game just be­cause it's a Mexi­can league team and be­cause of their great play­ers they have," said mid­field­er Miguel Ibar­ra, who used to play for Leon. "I know a lot of His­pan­ic guys want to come watch Rafa Mar­quez. He's a big name.

"If we per­form well and we're able to keep up with them, I think it's just going to help us in the long run of bring­ing His­pan­ics to our games."