For Minnesota United, it’s like a whole new season on top of the MLS playoff race

Minnesota United finally returns to the field Saturday, after three-and-a-half weeks without a competitive match. In a way, it feels like the beginning of the Loons’ season — really, the beginning of their third mini-season of 2024.

Their first season was pre-June, when Minnesota — with an new chief soccer officer who’d barely arrived, with a new coach that wasn’t in place until the fourth game of the year, with unheralded striker Tani Oluwaseyi coming to prominence as the team’s chief offensive weapon, and with an entirely new offensive and defensive system — shot up to near the top of the MLS standings. All that despite the unexcused absence and eventual departure of Emanuel Reynoso, the team’s best player.

Their second season began in June, when international absences and injuries derailed the team, and the Loons set club records by losing six consecutive games and going nine without a win. It also changed the team’s entire vibe from “everything’s coming up roses” to “maybe this team needs a lot of help” — something that Khaled El-Ahmad, the CSO and sporting director, began to address with an extremely active summer.

Counting moves that happened before the transfer window opened, Minnesota has sold, traded or loaned out eight players since the season began, and added six new players — including two new Designated Players.

And so Minnesota begins its third season this weekend, a nine-game sprint to the MLS finish line, just barely above the playoff line and with a number of questions to answer in a short period.

The first question is at the top of the roster, where striker Kelvin Yeboah and midfielder Joaquín Pereyra have the added pressure of being acquired as Designated Players. Since the introduction of the unlimited-salary spots on MLS rosters began, some of soccer’s biggest names have cycled through as DPs, but not all of them have been successful.

Just last week, the Chicago Fire announced they were terminating former Liverpool star Xherdan Shaquiri’s contract, less because the Swiss midfielder wanted out and more because he was so ineffective that the Fire had discovered they were simply better off without him.

Yeboah has officially joined the Loons and is in training, though — like several new acquisitions — he’s basically in preseason mode, and hasn’t played a competitive game since mid-May. Pereyra, meanwhile, is still working on getting his visa — and given Minnesota’s history with Argentine players and the immigration process, it’s anyone’s guess how long that might take.

Can Yeboah and Pereyra provide the DP-spot-worthy play that could put Minnesota back among the best in the Western Conference? Nine games is probably too short a time to answer that completely, but with Minnesota in ninth place in the standings, they Loons will need their biggest-name players to be at their best.

The second question is the kind of question we might ask during a normal preseason: How is the team going to play, given the new players that have come in? Manager Eric Ramsay now has a bunch of new options and new tools in the toolbox, as well as lineup headaches for the first time in months. “We’ll have to leave players out of the squad, which is something that I don’t think I’ve done since I’ve been here, so it adds another dimension to my role, for sure,” Ramsay said.

Yeboah gives the team another option up front to add to Teemu Pukki, alongside Oluwaseyi, who’s still working back to fitness from a hamstring injury and didn’t fully participate in Tuesday’s training session. Pereyra, when he arrives, will give Minnesota midfield options next to — or instead of — Robin Lod, Wil Trapp and Hassani Dotson.

Matúš Kmeť, the team’s new right wingback, will be competing with DJ Taylor — and perhaps even Sang Bin Jeong, whom Ramsay compared to Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka, as a potential player who can play as a right-sided forward in the attack while also potentially defending in a back five.

Jefferson Diaz, the team’s new center back, seems set to slot in on the right side of the team’s back three. But Ramsay suggested the flexibility of the team’s wingbacks could mean the team’s defensive setup might even look like more of a back four rather than a back five, which could mean more of a traditional right-back role at times for Diaz.

Are they all ready to play? Can they make a difference? “It’s a strange position to be in,” Ramsay said. “We’re hitting a period where it’s crucial, it’s decisive, every point is going to matter, but we’ve got players that are in effect two or three weeks into their preseason. We’ve got to be mindful of that and be sensible, but also appreciate the fact that it’s a situation where you’re probably likely to take more risks than you would in normal circumstances.”

In other words, Minnesota United is in an odd spot. It’s the middle of the season, a preseason, and a stretch drive all rolled into one, with the same core of the team augmented by new players that need to settle quickly. Whether they can do so will go a long way toward defining whether this season feels more like the first season of the new era of MNUFC — or a “Year Zero” sort of interregnum between the old era and the new.