Analysis: Minnesota United’s new contract with Michael Boxall, 36, isn’t just a captain’s reward

Minnesota United has tried all season to get younger. The team’s summer shopping spree brought in six players, none of them old enough to remember when the years on the calendar started with the numbers 1 and 9.

Michael Boxall, though, is always going to be an exception. Tuesday, MNUFC announced that they’d signed their captain to a contract extension through 2025, with a team option for 2026 — immediately following what might have been Boxall’s best game of the season, last Saturday against Sporting Kansas City.

Yes, even though Boxall, who just turned 36, is old enough to have been in the fifth grade when Y2K rolled around.

“It was really good timing because he was phenomenal for us on Saturday,” said manager Eric Ramsay. “I think it’s pretty symbolic, in a sense. … Boxy is someone who sets the standard with how he looks after himself and how he trains, and in those games in particular, he’s a gladiator — and that’s what we need.”

The New Zealand native would have been a free agent at season’s end and said that he was surprised at this point in his career to find that he had a ton of interest from other clubs, more than any other time in the past. But in the end, not only do his wife and two kids love it in Minnesota — things just feel right.

“After being here for so long, I think the feel of Allianz [Field] and the 20,000 people that fill that stadium kind of play a big part in that too,” he said. “I think if I was to go anywhere else, it would feel like I’d be going there as a job. Here, it doesn’t — it feels like more than that.”

Boxall is the only Loon to have played in every season of the club’s MLS tenure, and the longest-serving member of the squad by far; he’s made 230 appearances in all competitions for Minnesota, nearly 70 more than any other player in the MLS era.

Despite Boxall’s age and experience, though, this is not just a ceremonial contract, where a player is rewarded for his long service with an extra year on the payroll as some sort of club ambassador or player-coach.

Boxall leads the Loons in minutes this season, despite missing two games to play for his country at the Olympics, and he’s been the steadiest center back on the roster this year — something Minnesota has needed desperately, as they’ve toggled between formations and filled in gaps throughout the back line.

Minnesota is tied for the league lead in the number of players they’ve used this season, including 10 different players who have played in central defense. It’s meant that Boxall couldn’t be comfortable with any specific partnership; of the 12 different center-back configurations he’s been part of this season, none of them have lasted for more than a total of eight games.

“We’ve really put the challenge in front of his feet, Boxy, to really take on that leadership mantle,” Ramsay said. “He obviously leads very much by example in his application, competitiveness and aggression, and we want that leadership to extend as far and wide as it possibly can over the course of the coming years.”

The Loons still want to add young players, even at center back, but part of this new project, led by Ramsay and chief soccer officer Khaled El-Ahmad, requires veteran players who set the tone for the club. That’s what they think they have in Boxall — and for his part, he’s ready to keep working on Minnesota United, rather than starting a new job, in his words.

“I feel like leaving at this point in time, when I still feel like we can achieve more, would have just been leaving too early,” said Boxall. “Especially at this point in my career, too. It’s like, do you want to start a new project at [age] 36? That’s not too common in this line of work.”