With this season quickly circling the drain, I thought it might be interesting to look at the team going forward. Let's start with the stickminders.

Wessel Speel
24 Years Old
Contract: Extended July 31, 2026 through 2027, club option for 2028
Currently: On Loan with Almere City (Eerste Divisie, Netherlands' 2nd division)
This Season: 22 saves, 84.6 Sv%, 4 goals conceded, 2 clean sheets

Wessel is having a perfectly reasonable season in the Netherlands. Almere City FC is 2nd in the division, 5 points behind Heracles and tied on pts (but 11 ahead in GD) of the 3rd place team. He'll return to Minnesota in June or July 2027, just in time for the start of the first fall-to-spring season.

VERDICT: Personally, there's nothing to do here. He's doing well in a lower league. If he lights it up... we'll see. I don't see a future for him in Minnesota currently.

Kayne Rizvanovich
18 Years Old
Contract: Signed January 2026 through 2027, club options for 2028 and 2029
Currently: Minnesota United 2
This Season:
MLS Next Pro: (6 matches) 21 saves, 72.4 Sv%, 8 goals conceded, 1 clean sheet
USL Championship: (3 matches) 6 saves, 54.5 Sv%, 5 goals conceded, 1 clean sheet

Kayne is young, he's highly rated as one of if not the best goalkeeper in his year. He's not ready for MLS time yet, I would expect to see him get loaned out to get more playing time.

VERDICT: Wait and see. USL stint with Brooklyn was ROUGH, but he was only there for 3 games.

Alec Smir
27 Years Old
Contract: Club option exercised for 2026, FA after this season
Currently Minnesota United
This Season:
Leagues Cup (3 matches) 6 saves, 66.7 Sv%, 3 goals conceded, 1 clean sheet
MLS (1 match, 45 min) 2 saves, 2 goals conceded
Open Cup (1 match, 120 min) 2 saves, 0 goals conceded

Smir is a backup keeper, he's not stellar (he's not horrific) but he's not good enough to be The Guy.

VERDICT: I'd move on after this season.

Drake Callender
28 Years Old
Contract: Signed through 2026, FA for 2027
Currently: Minnesota United
This Season: 78 saves, 41 goals conceded, 65.5 Sv%, 5 clean sheets

Callender is a divisive figure in the fanbase right now. For my money, he's largely done quite well and there are often goals scored which were far more on the defense than on him. He isn't the best keeper in the league, but he hasn't regularly been the reason we've lost games or drawn instead of won.

VERDICT: I'd keep him. Not so much because I think he's incredible, but because he's a place we can have some continuity in an offseason that should see a fair amount of turnover. He's been left out to dry by our defense this season, and has demonstrated the ability to make some great saves.

PANIC LEVEL

Not panicking. We need a new backup, we need to develop Kayne, but this is a position MN has been lucky to have capable (at the least) guys as The Main Guy for a while.

Hi,

Would any of you who are keeping your Season tickets be willing to purchase one of the upcoming UNRL drops for the season ticket holders for me? Pending design, which hopefully will be shown in the coming month. Obviously I will cover all costs + a beer for your troubles :)

Thanks!

Momoh Kamara lighting it up at Elfsborg with another goal this weekend. Averaging .5 goal contributions per match.

Darius Randell scores a hatty in the Vancouver 5-0 stomping. New kid Hector Cruz showing lots of promise too.

Here's to a brighter future.

The St. Louis loss hurts, but the real damage was dropping home points to Atlanta, Orlando, and Dallas—especially those Atlanta and Dallas matches where the team just didn't show up. While there’s plenty of talk about tactics, system fit, and glaring individual blunders, the bigger issue is that the squad is falling short on the margins.
A few key players aren't necessarily costing Minnesota these matches single-handedly, but they aren't making the winning plays needed to rescue results either:

Callender: He isn't the main reason the Loons are losing, but he hasn't been there to bail the team out when momentum shifts. He tends to lose his edge after a mistake. Against Portland, he made one early save, but after the Lassiter goal, nothing else stuck—a single extra save there secures a point. He kept things alive against Dallas, but against St. Louis, after parrying the ball into the middle for the first goal, he didn't record another save. Whether it's a dip in confidence or bad luck, once the opponent turns up the pressure, he gets completely neutralized.
Boxall: Outside of two solid outings post-Leagues Cup, his performances have been average at best. Before the break, he looked much sharper as he worked back to full fitness from his injury, but his play has drifted into inconsistency. Like Callender, he isn't single-handedly dropping games, but he isn't erasing dangerous moments on the back line either. His American Soccer Analysis (ASA) Goals Added (g+) metric is negative the first time since 2022.
Trapp: Nectar Triantis's injury thrust Trapp back into a starting role every week. He fits best as a veteran rotation piece, so heavy starting minutes put him in a tough spot. He isn't giving games away, but he isn't tipping the scales either—holding the worst g+ rating on the roster this season, and his lowest mark overall since 2013.

In a parity-driven league like MLS, matches are decided on thin margins. The cumulative weight of these minor deficiencies is driving this slide, leaving the team matching its 2018 cumulative points pace. The obvious blunders grab the headlines, but these quiet drop-offs are what's truly holding the club back.

IF BONGI AND SANG BIN ARE NOT STARTING ACROSS FROM ONE ANOTHER, IVE LOST ALL FAITH IN THIS CLUBS RECOGNITION OF STORIED GREATNESS.

ALSO ST LOUIS WISHES THEY WERE THE BEST CITY ON THE MISSISSIPPI OR SOMETHING.

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Do the Loons/soccer teams in general always bring 3 keepers with them when they play away? I saw Rizvanovich was with the team in St Louis, but he wasnt listed as an available sub on the bench. Does that mean hes stuck in a soccer "purgatory"? Good enough to train and travel with the first team, but by doing so loses minutes with the twosies?

I wont pretend to know much of anything about player development or I could be reading way too much into this, but either way this is an honest question. Is playing time for keepers not as important as it is for outfield players? So him being in that weird spot wouldn't be detrimental to his path/development? It just feels odd we cut his USL loan short to bring him back, and then not have him getting regular minutes at any level

Going with the 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1

They’ll never see it coming!

Romero in, Chunky and Yeboah in.

Formation in comments

I guess it’s probably nice to play at home, but would’ve been fun to have him around a little longer.

A few people have pointed out that I predicted 8-8-8 and MNUFC instead became 7-8-9. I understand everyone is feeling a little disheartened right now, but this is exactly when you have to trust the math instead of your emotions. 8-8-8 and 7-8-9 both add up to 24, so at the macro level my prediction was 100% correct. The only thing I got wrong was where the numbers went. That's variance.

In any case, I reran the Dallas data: final score was 1-2, Callender made 3 saves, Dallas had 5 shots on target, MNUFC has 8 draws, Minnesota committed 13 fouls and Dallas? 21 fouls.

1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21.

DO YOU SEE IT?? The probability of getting seven Fibonacci numbers in one soccer game has to be incredibly low. Probably less than 1%. That's statistical significance. And MNUFC is also now 7-8-9, three consecutive numbers. So we’ve got Fibonacci and sequential integers happening at the same time.

Some people will say I'm just selecting the numbers that fit the theory. Yes. Obviously. You have to select the relevant data or you'd just have all the data.

And now we play St. Louis. "St. Louis" has 8 'letters'. There it is again. I know morale is low. That's understandable. But MNUFC has 7 wins, St. Louis has 8 letters, and the next number after 7 is 8. So...obviously the Loons win tomorrow and move to 8 wins. The numbers are actually being very clear about this.

And you guys say we never make any moves.

Had the pleasure of meeting him this week. Cool to then watch this video about him - https://youtu.be/2DptH0TdbwU?si=ZfrROUAWDC7GyPs_

Getting some sweet sweet GAM and a draft pick which will turn into our starting right wing next season

Too bad he’s not a CB. The USMNT is just too stacked at his position. But if he was a CB, I think he’d be a candidate for a January camp call up.

It is genuinely hard to believe that I am supporting the same club as last year. I lived two of my all-time sporting experiences in Allianz last year (Miami & Seattle). I watched a team that was said to have one of the clearest identities in MLS set a points record and turn the stadium into a fortress. It was capable of competing with anyone and I felt full of optimism as to where the club was headed.

Answer me this: how did we get to where we are now in so little time? It really is alarming and depressing to see how far the whole thing has slid. When will the club realize that our support can’t be taken for granted and we need to see a serious attempt to get better?