Loons celebrate soccer’s long history in Minnesota, from the Kicks to the Thunder to the Stars

Minnesota United’s new “Heritage” jerseys are an obvious homage to the Minnesota Kicks, the 1976-1981 franchise that set the original North American Soccer League (NASL), or at least the Met Stadium parking lots, on fire. Orange and blue, with a throwback logo and wordmark. Everything about the jerseys is 1979.

The team’s “Heritage Celebration” on Saturday night when the Loons take on the Seattle Sounders is about more than just the Kicks, though. Kicks greats like Tony Peszneker and the two Alans, Willey and Merrick, will be in attendance, but so will players and coaches and staff from the succeeding era of Minnesota soccer, the one that runs right up until the present day: the Thunder, who became the Stars, who became the Loons.

It’s a history that is hard to match in American soccer. The Loons have been at this since 1990, just under four different names and in a seemingly endless variety of leagues.

Buzz Lagos, then a teacher and coach, started the Minnesota Thunder in 1990 as a high-level amateur team. The team eventually became professional, playing for years in the various leagues of the American second division under various names.

The Thunder winked out of existence after 2009, when their then-owner skipped town to avoid the unpaid bills he’d been racking up. Djorn Buchholz, now the executive director of the National Soccer Hall of Fame in Dallas, was the Thunder’s GM at the time.

“I had no hope,” he said. “The staff hadn’t been paid in six months, and I’d just put the playoff tickets to Puerto Rico on my credit card, and never got paid back.”

Buchholz left to take another job in soccer, thinking things were over. But the National Sports Center stepped in for 2010 to fund a team, naming them the NSC Minnesota Stars.

“I kept my eye on Minnesota because, I mean, that’s my heart and soul, you know?” he said.

The two years that followed, 2011 and 2012, still define the franchise in many ways, even after they dropped the “NSC” moniker from their name. The “Team That Nobody Wanted,” as dubbed by the fans, scratched through with a front office of four to six people. Buchholz, current head of player care Angie Blaker, and then-head coach (and current chief development officer) Manny Lagos, among others, wore every possible hat to keep the team running on a shoestring budget.

They brought the team one of just two championships it ever won, as the Stars claimed the 2011 Soccer Bowl after barely clambering into the playoffs as the sixth and final seed.

Then came an owner in 2012, as Dr. Bill McGuire took a shine to the sport of soccer - and to the local underdog squad and its then-motley crew of fans. Maybe most enduringly, the team’s most well-known tradition — singing “Wonderwall” by Oasis after wins — got going, thanks to assistant coach Carl Craig, who will also be back for Saturday’s game.

Those years were the most upheaval the franchise ever saw – but also served as the foundation for the present day.

It may seem strange for a squad playing just its ninth MLS season to have a heritage night, but not if you consider the history as a whole. Roll together the Kicks, Strikers (who played one outdoor season plus five in indoor soccer), Thunder, Stars and Loons, and you’ve got an almost unbroken line of soccer in Minnesota that stretches back nearly five decades.

Buchholz saw it at its lowest, and is proud to have been a part of the lineage.

“If you take a 30,000-foot view of it, this team has been around for almost 50 years in some form,” said Buchholz. “And that’s not normal in soccer in this country. The Sounders are probably in the same boat, and the [Portland] Timbers are probably in the same boat. But beyond that, there’s not many, man. There’s not many.”