Minnesota United FC

Team information

Inaugural season: 2017

Home field: Allianz Field, Saint Paul, Minnesota

Owner: Bill McGuire

Team colors: Gray, sky blue, and black

Overview

The Minnesota United FC are a professional soccer team that plays in North America’s Major League Soccer (MLS). The Minnesota franchise was formed in 2017 as part of the latest wave of MLS expansion. The team is informally nicknamed the Loons after Minnesota’s state bird and plays its home games in St. Paul. Its primary ownership group is led by a former healthcare executive and includes investors from some of the city’s other major professional sports teams. Minnesota struggled for two seasons upon entering the league but found its groove in 2019 and made the MLS for three straight seasons.

History

Prior to the 1990s, the most successful professional soccer league in North America was the North American Soccer League (NASL), which existed from 1968 to 1984. At its height in the late 1970s, the NASL had twenty-four teams and averaged more than fourteen thousand fans a game. After the 1975 season, the Denver Dynamo relocated to the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington and called themselves the Minnesota Kicks. The Kicks sported a distinctive look that included brightly colored uniforms that were dubbed “creamsicle” orange. The look made the team popular with local fans as well as those across the country.

Minnesota also had success on the field, winning its division from 1976 to 1979 and advancing to the NASL Final in 1976. The Kicks averaged more than twenty-three-thousand fans a game in its inaugural season and more than thirty thousand a game in 1977 and 1978. However, the team would not sustain that success. By the early 1980s, Minnesota was struggling financially, and its ownership decided to sell the Kicks at the end of the 1980 season. The team eventually folded at the end of the 1981 season. The Minnesota Strikers took its place in the NASL in 1984, but that team, like the league itself, did not last another season. The NASL ceased operations in early 1985, and the Strikers briefly played as an indoor soccer team.

In 1994, the United States hosted the FIFA World Cup, the premier soccer tournament in the world. The event proved such a success that a new soccer league—Major League Soccer (MLS)—was formed in 1996 to take advantage of the game’s increased popularity in North America. The league weathered some hard financial times in the early 2000s but found stability as the 2010s approached. Starting in 2005, MLS began a series of expansions that saw it grow from ten teams in 1996 to twenty teams by 2015.

The team that would become Minnesota United was founded in 2010 as the NSC Minnesota Stars. The Stars were a second-division squad that played in a lower-level professional league. In 2012, the team was sold to Bill McGuire, the former CEO of UnitedHealth Group. In early 2013, the club was rebranded as Minnesota United. The new name had its roots in naming conventions used by European teams. Some European soccer teams use the term United because they were formed as a merger of two other teams, or they are meant to act as a regional team, “uniting” two or more cities or areas. In the case of Minnesota, the team “united” the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

By the mid-2010s, MLS was looking to continue its expansion, and McGuire wanted to bring a top-level professional club to Minnesota. To raise the funds needed for the MLA franchise fee, McGuire partnered with investors Jim Pohlad, owner of Major League Baseball (MLB)’s Minnesota Twins; Glen Taylor, owner of the National Basketball Association (NBA)’s Timberwolves; and Glen Nelson, who was part of the ownership group of the National Hockey League (NHL)’s Wild. Minnesota was awarded a franchise in 2015 with the expectation that it would take the field in 2017 or 2018. When an expansion team in Los Angeles was not ready in time, Minnesota began play in 2017.

The new franchise kept the existing Minnesota United name and most of its logo. The team was slightly rebranded as Minnesota United FC, with the letters standing for “football club.” The team logo features a gray-and-white shield outline with a blue swath across the center. In the upper left corner is a star, while in the center of the shield is a black loon with eleven feathers on its spread wing. The letters MNUFC are set at the bottom right. The logo’s blue swath is meant to signify the Mississippi River; the star is a reference to the state’s motto, L’Étoile du Nord (Star of the North); and the loon represents the state bird of Minnesota. The bird also gave the team its informal nickname, the Loons.

Minnesota played its first two seasons at TCF Bank Stadium on the campus of Minnesota University. Neither season was particularly successful record-wise, with the team finishing far out of the playoff hunt. However, the team did average more than twenty-thousand fans per game. In 2019, the Loons moved into their new home, Allianz Field in Saint Paul and posted a record of 15 wins, 8 ties, and 11 losses, good enough for seventh place in MLS and a trip to the playoffs. However, Minnesota dropped its first-ever playoff game to the LA Galaxy.

Minnesota went 9-7-5 in a 2020 season shorted by the COVID-19 pandemic and again made the postseason. This time, the team won its first two matches and advanced to the conference semifinals before finally losing to the Seattle Sounders FC, 3–2. The team went 13-10-11 in 2021 and once again made the playoffs before losing to the Portland Timbers in the first round. In 2022, they became the only team in the western conference to qualify for the playoffs four years in a row. However, they were defeated by FC Dallas. In 2023, the team fired head coach Adrian Heath.

Notable players

Forward Christian Ramirez was the team’s leading scorer in its inaugural season of 2017. Ramirez scored 14 goals, including the first MLS goal in franchise history in an opening game loss. Ramirez would play two seasons in Minnesota and score 21 goals, a total that sits third in team history as of 2021. Ramirez played on the second-division Minnesota United before it joined MLS and was that team’s all-time leading scorer.

Midfielder Kevin Molino played for Minnesota from 2017 thorough the 2020 season. Molino, who hails from Trinidad and Tobago, is second on the all-time club list with twenty-five goals scored as of 2021. He was also third in assists with 19. Molino also leads the team in playoff goals with four. He scored two in Minnesota United’s 3–0 victory over the Colorado Rapids in the first round of the 2020 playoffs and two more in their 3–0 conference semifinal win over Sporting KC.

The franchise’s all-time leading scorer as of 2021 is Colombian forward Darwin Quintero who scored 27 goals in his two seasons with the team. In 2018, Quintero signed with Minnesota from Club América, a soccer team based in Mexico City. After the 2019 season, he was traded to the Houston Dynamo. Quintero scored 21 regular season goals, leading Minnesota United with 11 in 2018, despite joining the team five games into the season. He scored 10 goals in 2019. He added six more goals in the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup, a knockout-style tournament between the top US men’s soccer teams.

American midfielder Ethan Finlay, a Minnesota native, began his career with the team in 2017 and is fourth all-time with 17 goals as of 2021. Slovakian midfielder Ján Greguš is second on the franchise list with 21 assists as of 2021. He is just one behind franchise leader Quintero who had 22. New Zealand defender Michael Boxall, who began play with Minnesota in 2017 and remained with the team as of 2021, leads the franchise with 108 appearances. Italian goalkeeper Vito Mannone holds the franchise record for most shutouts with 11, despite playing only one season in Minnesota in 2019. American Bobby Shuttleworth, who was with the team from 2017 to 2019, is second with 8.

Finnish midfielder Robin Lod joined the Loons in 2019 and started just six games. In 2020, he led the team with nine goals scored. He followed that with seven goals scored in 2021. As of the end of that season, Lod sits sixth on the all-time franchise scoring list.

Bibliography

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Gulenchyn, T.J. “30 Days to 50k: Founding of Minnesota United.” Minnesota United FC, 21 Sept. 2018, www.mnufc.com/news/30-days-50k-founding-minnesota-united. Accessed 21 Mar. 2024.

McDougall, Chrös. Minnesota United FC. ABDO, 2021.

“Minnesota United FC Stats and History.” FB Reference, 2024, fbref.com/en/squads/99ea75a6/history/Minnesota-United-Stats-and-History. Accessed 21 Mar. 2024.

“Minnesota United FC Team History.” Sports Team History, 2024, sportsteamhistory.com/minnesota-united-fc. Accessed 21 Mar. 2024.

Rueter, Jeff. “A Name That’s ‘Part Of Who We Are’—How Minnesota Remained United.” MLS.com, 19 Aug. 2016, www.mlssoccer.com/news/name-thats-part-who-we-are-how-minnesota-remained-united. Accessed 21 Mar. 2024.

Rucker, Jael. “Major League Soccer History: How MLS Became A Big Business.” ONE37pm, 18 Feb. 2021, www.one37pm.com/strength/sports/major-league-soccer-history. Accessed 21 Mar. 2024.

“Written in Ice: A History of Pro Soccer in Minnesota—The Kicks.” SB Nation, 3 Dec. 2016, www.epluribusloonum.com/2016/12/3/13772628/written-in-ice-a-history-of-pro-soccer-in-minnesota-minnesota-kicks. Accessed 21 Mar. 2024.