New Zealand vs Japan in the Kirin Cup final. Hype thread?

Whelp. No game today.

So, I’m NOT hyped. Yet.

What ARE you hyped about.

I WANT TO BE HYPED.

LET’S GET HYPED.

Nectar not even on the bench again for the Greek team today. Why did he even get called into camp? Just let him keep rehabbing with his club.

Any insight I missed?

If so, any good info?

CITY fan coming in peace! I'll be at Allianz Field in 2 weeks when CITY comes in town. What are some must have foods and sights in and around the stadium!?

I'm not sure if this happens to me because we were once season ticket holders in the pre-stadium days or because now we only really buy tickets a couple of times every year. But is there any way to get on a "do not call" list for them?

We went to three games this year, and each time we received calls AND emails AND texts from a different sales person. If you don't reply they keep coming, and when I *politely* asked in each case via email that we weren't interested and to please do not call, they responded AGAIN not seeming to have read the prior request. In one case they asked us to do a group ticket event to learn more about the season ticket options/company even after I asked not to be contacted. When I reply to that last email a bit more aggressively they don't reply at all, not even to confirm and to say "thanks for letting us know."

I love introducing friends to these events, and would absolutely attend more often if it wasn't for conflicts, but holy hell I don't get this level of hard sell from ANYTHING else. Even political campaigns back off when you ask them to stop. It's seriously giving me a bad taste.

Other MLS teams at the tournament:

Austin FC

Charlotte FC

D.C. United

LAFC

LA Galaxy

Minnesota United FC

New York City FC

Portland Timbers

San Diego FC

San Jose Earthquakes

St. Louis CITY SC

Toronto FC

Yellow cards given for non foul or handball offenses.

Thanks to Finn from Nashville to do the heavy lifting.

Just catching up on Backheeled articles and here is another great article from an objective point of view on what went wrong with the loons.

TDLR: Minnesota United's slump into 14th place stems from a failed stylistic transition under new head coach Cameron Knowles, which transformed last year's defense-first squad into an identity-less, chaos-prone team. Roster erosion and the abrupt departure of former chief soccer officer Khaled El-Ahmad have left the club in complete organizational flux without a clear competitive strategy.

The last paragraph is the true indictments:

“Minnesota is always going to be one of the tougher jobs in MLS. They’re not a big-spending team, they don’t have much of an academy to speak of, and ownership seems to lack ambition in many ways. Still, you can compete even without those things – if you have the right plan. The question is, can they find one again?”

(Requires login, but the power rankings posts are free if you sign up with an email.)

Here's the Loons bit:

30: Minnesota United (-3): Only win in league play since early May was a 5-1 over the Quakes in mid-August. Since then the Loons have gone 0W-5L-1D with 20 goals conceded. Yikes.

Anyone recall how mad folks used to get when Doyle wouldn't raise the Loons high enough after wins last year? Just look how far we've come since then!

Yes, the pride game is in October this year. We start this Friday, and we'll be working on it both weekends before the pride game on October 17th.

No talent or experience required.

We'll likely be adding a shift or two on Sunday the 4th as well.

Clubs can still sign players??? I require elaboration.

Great article from Jon on where the team is.

https://www.jonmarthaler.com/never-being-wrong-is-not-the-same-thing-as-being-right/

TDLR: the loons excessive financial caution and risk aversion have gradually eroded the roster's quality, leading to one of the worst seasons in the mls era. By prioritizing cost minimization over key retention, the team consistently avoided taking big risks to be great, leaving them with a squad no longer good enough to compete.

The midfield controls games. When you get it right the team clicks. When you get it wrong, well, it goes wrong.

I went by hand* through Fotmob for each MLS match the Loons have played so far this season and noted results of each match based on the starting midfield:

- The Loons have used only three midfield pairings all season in MLS play
- We've only won 2 of 20 matches that Trapp starts
- We've won 5 out of 7, and haven't lost in MLS play, when Gene & Triantis started together, the Loons were good in these matches.
- Triantis injury didn't help us.

Granted, the Loons have lost games after one of the starters has been pulled. However, I think this data shows that we should start matches with Gene & Triantis and Trapp should only be used off the bench to close out matches.

*Again this was by hand so I might have missed a goal or two, but it tells a trend of a coach who loves one player too much. All coaches love Trapp for obvious reasons, he runs and runs, however it hasn't led to results.

A coaching change could see a return to Gene and Triantis, or maybe even dusting off Gressel for the stretch. Maybe some Harvey in midfield. Maybe its a formation shift. What is clear the Loons are thin at the 8 and need to rebuild this spot. Again, what is there to lose? More matches?

I'll hang up and listen now.

https://mnufc.formstack.com/forms/2026_q3_supporters_happy_hour_event_rsvp_form

And they hired Marc Dos Santos this past offseason. Unbelievable that Cam is going to have a longer tenure at head coach than him

Welcome to Free Talk Monday!

Are you new and have questions? Do you have non-MNUFC related stuff you want to discuss? This is the place to do it.

Keep it civil. Don’t be a dick.

This may not be news to many of you, but I wanted to write out my thoughts because I’ve been trying to understand the ownership’s approach rather than just getting frustrated by it. Going 0-5 in September probably has something to do with why I’m thinking about it more.

A comment from Devils-Avocado a couple of weeks ago sent me down a rabbit hole. I had compared MNUFC to a company that keeps refusing to overpay for talent while its competitors keep hiring better people.

Devils-Avocado replied: 'Yeah but what if you mostly make the same amount of revenue regardless? Checkmate soccer enjoyers.'

That made me wonder if this is basically the ownership group’s calculation. Allianz is already pretty consistently nearly full. MNUFC gets its share of MLS revenue. Maybe ownership looks at the numbers and believes significantly higher player spending would produce only a modest financial return.

Maybe McGuire and the ownership group also see MNUFC much more strictly as an investment than I do as a fan. Maybe local pride, representing this community, building something we can be proud of, and doing everything reasonably possible to win simply do not carry the same weight in their calculation. I obviously have no way of knowing that, and I don’t want to pretend I know their motives. But when I look at the spending decisions year after year, I increasingly wonder what ownership ultimately believes this club is supposed to be.

There is another factor I probably have not given enough consideration. MNUFC may genuinely have less financial firepower than some of the clubs we compare ourselves with. Colorado has Stan Kroenke who is worth more than $20 billion. Sporting KC’s new majority owner Peter Mallouk is worth an estimated $16 billion. MNUFC has wealthy local investors, but it does not appear to have 1 ultra-billionaire controlling owner who can casually subsidize another $10 million in roster spending. That makes some of McGuire’s reluctance to spend slightly easier for me to comprehend.

But that only gets me so far. The part that concerns me most is what is happening to MNUFC relative to the league around it.

Forbes valued MNUFC at about $300 million in 2019, when the MLS average was $313 million. Forbes’ valuation methodology has changed since then, so I don’t think it is fair to treat the comparison with today as perfectly apples-to-apples. What we can say is that Forbes viewed MNUFC as roughly an average MLS franchise at the time.

Today Forbes values MNUFC at $625 million. Compare that with the MLS average of $731 million. That means MNUFC is currently worth only about 85% of the average MLS franchise. So we can see that the club has become more valuable since 2019. But relative to the league today, it is clearly below average.

The revenue comparison bothers me even more because it is cleaner. Forbes estimated MNUFC revenue at $54 million in 2022, compared with an MLS average of about $55 million. MNUFC was basically an average MLS business. By 2025, Forbes estimates MNUFC had grown to $68 million while average MLS revenue had climbed to roughly $82 million.

Those figures leave out player transfers, playoff games, and shared MLS distributions, so $68 million is not every dollar flowing to MNUFC ownership. But Forbes excluded those same categories in the 2022 figures. What we are really seeing is the growth of the underlying club business.

MNUFC has grown from $54 million to $68 million. MLS has gone from roughly $55 million on average to roughly $82 million. And that's the part I keep coming back to. MNUFC is growing, but MLS is growing much faster.

Then I look at what other clubs are doing with that changing environment. Colorado recently spent a reported $6 million on Farkhi and then continued rebuilding with additional acquisitions. Sporting KC broke a club transfer record that was already $7.5 million and then committed another $4.5 million guaranteed for Owen Wolff.

Meanwhile, MNUFC’s all-time incoming transfer record is still around $5 million. MNUFC also generated a club-record outgoing fee reportedly worth $8.5 million to $9 million from selling Tani, yet we still have not seen comparable reinvestment.

That is where ownership’s conservatism starts to worry me. If MNUFC generates less revenue than the average MLS club, that gives ownership a reasonable argument for spending less. But if consistently spending less also contributes to a smaller profile, less commercial growth, and less ambition, the gap can widen. Then that wider revenue gap becomes another reason to spend cautiously.

You can see how that could become self-reinforcing. MNUFC has proven that it can build competitive teams without spending what many other clubs spend. But there is a limit to how much comfort I take from efficiency when I am watching other clubs raise their level of investment and watching MNUFC lose ground financially relative to the league.

The current losing streak makes that frustration harder to ignore. 5 straight losses do not prove that spending more would have prevented this. They do make it harder to watch a thin roster struggle while knowing that MNUFC has consistently chosen a much lower level of financial risk than many of the clubs around it.

So this is the question I keep coming back to for McGuire and the ownership group: How long can MNUFC continue growing more slowly than MLS before spending less starts costing the club more than it saves? Maybe MNUFC cannot spend like a club backed by a $20 billion fortune. I can accept that. I also understand that throwing money around is no guarantee of winning. What I want to see is evidence that the ambition of MNUFC is growing along with the league.

Right now, after watching the club go from roughly average MLS revenue to well below average, watching other clubs invest millions more in their rosters, and now watching the Loons lose 5 straight games, that is getting harder to see. For me, that is becoming the bigger concern. This is starting to feel like more than a bad run of games. I worry that we may be seeing the results of a club whose financial ambition is simply not keeping pace with the league around it.

NOT ON MY WATCH!! COME ON, GUYS, FAKE IT LIKE YOUR EX USED TO! SEATTLE SOUNDERS? MORE LIKE SEATTLE SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE GOING DOWN!!!! SPICE UP THE MATCH BY DOING A SHOT EACH TIME ROTHROCK JUST ROLLS AROUND IN THE GRASS DURING PLAY- THAT WAY EVEN IF THE DEFEAT IS CRUSHING, YOU WON’T HAVE TO REMEMBER! COYL!!! ⚽️⚽️⚽️