Minnesota United’s Khaled El-Ahmad proud of losing a player to La Liga, excited to develop team’s transfers

Minnesota United chief soccer officer Khaled El-Ahmad always knew he’d have to field offers for his best players.

Just maybe not quite so soon.

“I thought maybe some of these offers would come after the World Cup,” he said. “It’s just a testament to what [manager] Eric [Ramsay] and the players are doing.”

The Loons sporting director said he’d received bids for various players totaling more than $20 million during a whirlwind summer transfer window. He’s already completed one deal, trading Sang Bin Jeong to St. Louis City for cash. He’s on the verge of another, with striker Tani Oluwaseyi set to complete a pinch-me move to Villarreal in Spain, giving the Canadian striker a chance to play in La Liga and the Champions League.

El-Ahmad cautioned that the deal was not done yet, but it’s obvious that the club as a whole is thrilled for Oluwaseyi.

“We want to be an environment where we not only make a dream happen with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, but also for some of our own players to move on,” he said.

That said, the Loons boss has turned down the rest of the offers so far, including lucrative ones from Turkey for playmaker Joaquín Pereyra.

Which isn’t to say that the money just goes into someone’s bank account. El-Ahmad has big plans for improvements at the team’s training facility, in hiring more staff, in continuing to set up the team for future success — investing in the club, even if he can’t invest it all in new players.

Oluwaseyi came off the bench as a sub on Saturday against Real Salt Lake but didn’t train with the team last Friday or this Tuesday as he works on getting visas sorted out for the move.

“When and if the transfer does happen, I think everyone should be super proud,” El-Ahmad said. “I know [his] teammates are, and I think the coaches are as well, that we are getting that interest in players, that Minnesota is looked at as a real club in a sense of developing high-level talent.”

Ramsay and company will have a chance to develop the players that the Loons brought in, too. All told, Minnesota has four new players, plus another coming this winter, spending a little less than $6 million in the process.

The two biggest names are attacking midfielder Dominik Fitz and defensive midfielder Nectarios Triantis.

El-Ahmad views Triantis as a defensive midfielder and says that — like striker Mamadou Dieng, who trained with the Loons for the first time Tuesday — Triantis is physically imposing, at 6-3 or 6-4.

“He’s calm on the ball, has the physical stature that we want to add to our team, and he’s good on set pieces,” El-Ahmad said.

That should fit in well with the club that Ramsay dubbed “Set Piece FC” in his postgame speech to players on Saturday.

Add in Paraguayan winger Alexis Fariña, who is on a loan deal, and it’ll give the Loons some pieces down the stretch — as soon as they can get visas for the players coming from overseas, which historically has taken some time for the Loons.

“It’s nothing we can really control,” El-Ahmad said. “We do our best to speed up the process as much as we can.”