Analysis: Minnesota United adjusting to playing without traditional strikers

When Minnesota United lined up for Saturday night’s 3-0 win against Sporting Kansas City, the Loons once again did so without their usual back five. Instead, manager Eric Ramsay chose a formation so classic that a venerable English soccer magazine was named for it: the 4-4-2.

The wrinkle was that, while the traditional formation includes two strikers, the Loons lined up attacking midfielders Joaquín Pereyra and Robin Lod as their front men — meaning, effectively, that they were playing with zero strikers.

“The combination of me and Joaquín both wanted to play a little bit more with the ball,” Lod said. “So, for us, it was more about dropping down, taking the ball, dominating the midfield and creating some combinations.”

Sporting KC played with five defenders and three deep-lying midfielders, inviting Minnesota to break down the opponent in what has become something of the standard playbook against the Loons.

Minnesota didn’t exactly succeed in breaking down SKC — the Loons’ three goals came off a counterattack from a midfield turnover and two set pieces — but that’s pretty much par for the course for the Loons.

“I think you couldn’t be at a more different point on that spectrum between playing with two out-and-out recognized number nines, to setting up as we did tonight with Joaquín and Robin,” Ramsay said Saturday. “The irony is probably in the fact that [while] we look so different, certainly in terms of personnel, it’s a game where we dominate the ball, we make a lot of chances, but ultimately it’s set plays that put us where we want to be.”

The Loons also hit another rare milestone Saturday, perhaps the best way to illustrate how different the night was for Minnesota. For the first time since July 2024, the Loons won a league game in which they had more possession than the opponent: 53%.

“The situation we are in now … has put us for the first time in a position where we have to think very differently about how the team looks,” he said. “I think we have really enjoyed that as a coaching staff. I’m sure the players have been refreshed by some different messages and players having to do something different. So, as we move into the playoffs now, it’s a nice string to have in our bow.”

Mamadou Dieng, signed in the summer transfer window from Hartford Athletic in the USL Championship, fits the profile of a prototypical Loons striker. Like Kelvin Yeboah and the now-departed Tani Oluwaseyi, he’s about 6-foot-2 and physically imposing, making him the perfect target for Minnesota’s typical counterattacking play.

So with Yeboah hurt, it might have been natural to assume he would be thrust into the limelight. Instead, the Loons are playing without a striker, and according to Ramsay, it’s because Dieng has a lot of Oluwaseyi-centric lessons still to learn.

“I think there’s some real maturity required from a defensive perspective, and I think we had got to such a good position with Tani in terms of the subtleties of the way he defended,” Ramsay said Friday. “Tani had just, number one, the drive to defend properly, the raw athletic skills that meant that he could set our pressure off really well. … He really picked the cues up really well, and our whole way of defending was sort of built off some of those subtleties that he was very good with.”

Oluwaseyi started Saturday for Villareal against Real Madrid in the Bernabeu, one of world soccer’s greatest cathedrals, so if Dieng needs any model to follow, the former Loon can’t be a bad one.