Minnesota United started Saturday night’s 2-1 victory at Atlanta United with what’s become a pretty common look for them in recent weeks: a 5-2-3 when the Loons have the ball, but a 5-4-1 when they are defending, packing players into the midfield to prevent the other team from getting inside.
It’s “forcing teams to play around us instead of inside us,” in the words of goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair from earlier in the week. “We know how hurtful it can be when teams play inside the shape.”
It’s a look based on pragmatism, especially on the road — and especially against a team that wants to get the ball to attacking maestro Thiago Almada and let him pass it around.
“You really have a sense of the game that you will really have to enjoy the defensive element, and you will really have to grind, and we did,” coach Eric Ramsay said. “I don’t think I had any expectation that we would come here and dominate the ball, because that is what they do best.”
The Loons’ offensive plan, especially in the first half, wasn’t going to win any awards for one-touch passing. For the most part, when they won the ball, they tried to get it down the field as fast as possible — and if that meant hoofing long balls at striker Tani Oluwaseyi, then so be it.
“We didn’t want to give anything cheap away to the opposition here,” Ramsay said. “They’re a good-pressing team, they’re very well-organized, very disciplined. They’ve got a really good change of pace and rhythm when they press. We wanted to make sure that we, in the opening stages, took that element of the game away from them.”
So does that mean that it’s all about old-school, route-one soccer on the road? For Ramsay, it had more to do with the opposition, not any fundamental commitment to one way of playing away.
“There will be points where we’ll build in a much cleaner way,” he said, “but there will also be moments where we recognize the game for what it is, meet the conditions that were brought in front of you, and make sure that in the early stages of the game when you take away one fundamental element of which they want to play.”