Loons Off to a Stumbling Start

The Loons stumbled out of the gate in the opener... And it was bad... Like, 5-1 bad.

Minnesota United FC started out their inaugural MLS season with a loss to Portland Timbers on the road in the Pacific Northwest.

This team playing against Portland managed to look even worse than they did in the preseason (at times). I didn’t think that was possible, but they did it.

But it would get even worse, thanks to some bad mistakes on the backline.

Fouling inside the area does not help a team win usually.

There was very little to salvage from this game, except to prepare supporters for constant #PANIC all season long. The attack is not free from ridicule either.

Typically, teams want to have someone at the end of a cross, which MNUFC failed to do on multiple occasions. United couldn’t decide whether they preferred to send in early crosses, or take it to the end line each time.

The Loons did maintain an advantage in possession during the match, but none of the passes seemed to do anything. Early on, United had a few possessions that tallied 10 or so passes, but the team was positioned so tightly together that these passes did not amount to anything. Once the team found some spacing, they seemed to be spread much too far apart. This will get better as time goes on (I hope), but it did not look good for them for a majority of the match.

Well at least we got to see Superman score (which is fitting) and Batman come out on the pitch later in the match.

Ideally, what needs to be done by Heath and the Loons is think up a completely different game plan and again ditch all four defenders. At this point we’re looking at a very long and excruciating season. At least we have Atlanta at home next weekend, hopefully we survive that match.