Big plans ahead for Minnesota United - and getting bigger

John Guagliano, Minnesota United's senior vice president of marketing and communication, drew a couple's curiosity while riding an elevator in downtown Minneapolis last week.

Eyeing Guagliano's black, zip-front jacket with the club's shield over the left breast, the woman asked, "Are you with the team? Our new team?"

Guagliano proceeded to share his excitement for the club's inaugural season with Major League Soccer. Promotion to the highest division of soccer in North America is coming fast and hard. Training camp opens in late January. The sprint is on to fill seats when a 34-game regular season kicks off in March, with home games at TCF Bank Stadium.

The hustle includes new coach Adrian Heath, whose hiring was announced less than two weeks ago. He immediately left the country to scout players as the team races to fill a roster.

Milestones keep coming, each bringing publicity. Next up, Monday's groundbreaking ceremony at the site of the team's planned 21,500-seat, privately financed stadium in St. Paul, set to open in 2018. Owner Bill McGuire, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and MLS Commissioner Don Garber will attend.

Meanwhile, Heath, Sporting Director Manny Lagos and director of player personnel Amos Magee are poring over the names of MLS players expected to be available in the league's expansion draft Tuesday afternoon. The five-round draft with fellow league newcomer Atlanta is expected to bring roster depth. The five players selected will join defenders Kevin Venegas and Justin Davis, talented holdovers from last season and the club's first two signings.

Two roster spots filled. Five more coming on Tuesday. Twenty-one to go to assemble the first team to play top-tier pro soccer in the Twin Cities before expected crowds in a size not seen since the 1980s.

"We're using the news, the building of our sporting side, to build interest," Minnesota United President Nick Rogers said. "Then we're following behind with strategic marketing."

Continued player signings will provide the steady "drumbeat" Rogers desires to build interest. Fans can expect additional signings of players who donned a Loons jersey last season. The team has the first pick of top college players in the league's SuperDraft on Jan. 13. International players also are likely, the fruits of recent team scouting trips to Scandinavia, Europe, Costa Rica and Argentina.

Additional news comes as the team announces its 2017 schedule later this month, where it will hold training camp and the look of new uniforms.

"We have big things happening that normal [MLS] clubs don't have and we need to make them bigger," Guagliano said. "We want to keep capitalizing on special milestones because each one can give you something."

A similar philosophy of maximizing value exists in the club's roster construction. Lagos has not hinted at a splashy signing. Instead he often refers to player value, aware of the reality that Minnesota isn't a market akin to New York or Los Angeles.

"We want to sign players for competitive reasons," Lagos recently told media members. "We don't have to educate our fan base by signing a certain type of player."

Heath also took a measured approach at his introductory news conference.

"It reminds me a little bit of Newcastle United. It's out of the way in the country, but it's got a rich history,'' Heath said. "What we have to do is make sure that we have players who want to be here for the right reasons. We've got a lot of hard work to do."

Contrast that approach with past years in the North American Soccer League, when the club signed three players who had won the league's MVP award. The economics of signing that caliber of player in MLS is "a different universe," Rogers said. Whether the club signs a player to generate immediate fan interest isn't his concern.

"It's never going to be one thing where we announce a coach or a player and sell a bunch of tickets the next day," Rogers said.

New teams such as Minnesota build the middle and bottom of their 28-man roster through the expansion draft, the SuperDraft and the signing of existing players. Top-tier players come via trades and international signings.

In the past, the formula typically included 10 players via the expansion draft, four to six current players signed, two college players from the four-round draft and eight international signings, said Gavin Wilkinson, Portland's general manager/president of soccer. Portland joined MLS as an expansion franchise in 2011.

But Minnesota's model differs because the club can select and sign up to five players via Tuesday's expansion draft. The league narrowed the number of picks, noting that Minnesota and Atlanta have more options to build their rosters. Other acquisition methods include the league's "allocation ranking," which organizes teams' priority to sign national-team players or other players who are returning to MLS.

Next month's SuperDraft in Los Angeles offers the promise of young talent. Duke forward Jeremy Ebobisse is considered the top prospect, ahead of UCLA teammates Abu Danladi and Jackson Yueill, a Bloomington native. The 2016 SuperDraft included four rounds.

Heath, who in 2015 oversaw Orlando City SC's transition from the United Soccer League to MLS, is realistic about the challenges to compete in a league in which no expansion team since 2010 has posted a winning record in its first season.

"We've got 28 players to find between now and 12 weeks," Heath said on Nov. 29, before Venegas and Davis signed. "So it's going to be tough. I saw enough in the last 18 months down in Orlando that we can put a team together to compete from Day 1 in Minnesota. That has to be the aim."

In a market already crowded with pro sports franchises and the University of Minnesota, Rogers said reaching beyond the state's soccer faithful is paramount to standing out. He said he anticipates "going outside our comfort zone and making soccer mainstream."

Drawing millennials and Latino fans, MLS' most successful demographics, is key. At 44 percent, millennials (ages 18-34) are the largest MLS fan base. In Hennepin County, the population of young adults rose nearly 25 percent during the past seven years, one of the biggest gains nationally. Latino fans make up 32 percent of MLS fans, the highest among U.S. pro leagues. The Latino population in the Twin Cities will more than double, to 373,000 people in 2040, according to Metropolitan Council estimates.

While certainly not all millennials drink craft beer, United has a substantial advertising presence in recent editions of The Growler magazine. Two full-page color ads plus a two-page color spread appear in the December issue.

Digital platforms such as Facebook and Twitter also get results. Rogers said engagement statistics provided monthly by MLS shows "through the roof" numbers for United-related posts, retweets, likes and video completion rates.

Those figures, while encouraging, are not the same as ticket sales. The club's two largest rushes for ticket interest came with the March 2015 announcement of Minnesota receiving an MLS expansion franchise and the confirmation in August that the club would begin MLS play in 2017.

The lower bowl of TCF Bank Stadium will be sold for all home matches, with a soccer capacity of 21,895 seats. For select matches, United will open the entire stadium. After getting 9,600 season-ticket deposits before announcing Heath as coach, the team says it has converted about 85 percent of those — about 8,160 — into full purchases for 2017. The team, in its final NASL season, had more than 5,000 season-ticket holders and drew an average of 8,569 fans for its 16 league matches.

Just six weeks into his job with Minnesota United, Guagliano sees a franchise on the rise. He helped Major League Baseball's Montreal Expos transition into the Washington Nationals and has also worked for the NHL's Nashville Predators and the NBA's old Charlotte Hornets and Bobcats.

"Awareness, awareness, awareness is so important," Guagliano said. "But there is so much pride in being part of something in Minnesota, this has probably been easier. I haven't seen it like this."