Minnesota United coach Eric Ramsay uses leading goal scorer Bongokuhle Hlongwane in hybrid role

As Minnesota United opens its season Saturday, there are still some questions to be answered.

For one: what are we going to call Bongokuhle Hlongwane’s position?

Defensively, he’s the right back. He jumps into midfield at times on defense, like a wingback. But when the Loons pass the ball out of their defense or take a long goal kick, Hlongwane trots all the way to the top of the formation, the same distance up the field as the forwards. And he’s not just there to get wide and cross the ball, he’s getting into the penalty area and trying to combine with the forwards.

So he’s sometimes a defender, sometimes a midfielder and sometimes a forward, depending on the position of the team and the ball. Even more than Joseph Rosales on the other side of the Loons' formation, he’s a wingback/striker hybrid.

It’s a position that defies nomenclature, perhaps by design from the coaching staff. After all, no young forward particularly wants to play fullback, especially one like Hlongwane, who’s led the team in goals in both of the last two seasons. Moving from forward to wingback is a move from a glamour position to a laborious position, like a wide receiver who moves to tight end in football or a shortstop who moves to second base in baseball.

And so manager Eric Ramsay is at pains to stress that the position isn’t just defense with an occasional side of offense, like it would be for a traditional fullback. The coaching staff envisions it being a role where Hlongwane and others can flourish, like Bukayo Saka at Arsenal or Jeremie Frimpong at Bayer Leverkusen — two players the staff has put on video to demonstrate what they’re after.

“It’s good for them to have the reference points of the very top level because we’ve got a relatively young group, we’ve got players that are aspiring to move to the next level,” Ramsay said. “I want to make sure that the guys know what the next level looks like. … I think for Bongi, [Frimpong] is a perfect reference point.”

Over the team’s three preseason games, Hlongwane showed a knack for getting into the right spots, but his final touches — sometimes a pass, sometimes a shot — mostly went awry. And so perhaps the first job for the Loons this year is to get Hlongwane back into the goal-scoring form that brought him 28 goals, in all competitions, over the past two seasons.

“Bongi is an interesting case,” Ramsay said. “We’ve just got to make sure as a team that we’re well set to bring the best out of him because he’s a good player on his day for sure.”

Minnesota closed its trip to Coachella with a 1-0 loss to NYCFC on Saturday, giving up a goal to Alonso Martinez in the 78th minute. After opening the trip with a 6-0 drubbing of Sporting Kansas City, the Loons went two games without a goal from open play, scoring only on a corner kick against the LA Galaxy in midweek.

Saturday, two things were different from a usual game. First, Minnesota played the same 11 players for the entire 90 minutes in the hopes of making sure all 11 were ready to play in the season opener against LAFC. Then, in the second half, the Loons switched to a 4-4-2 formation to experiment with another possible setup for the season to come.

“It was something we tried briefly last year when we played St. Louis, and struggled for the first 25 minutes and ended up changing back,” Ramsay said. “We wanted to make sure that we had a chance to at least have 45 minutes’ worth of footage and evidence of us defending in that way, so we can work out some of the kinks that we’ve got to get right.”

Neither defender Nicolás Romero nor midfielder Owen Gene was able to get a visa in time to play in the preseason. “It’s frustrating that we’re going to very likely open the first game without having any new signings on the pitch, but that’s the nature of things, unfortunately,” Ramsay said.

Romero in particular would have been a natural fit for opening day. The 21-year-old was targeted in part because he’s a left-footed center back — and Jefferson Díaz, who closed out 2024 at left center back, is suspended for the trip to LAFC.

Instead, the Loons will use Morris Duggan, who played all three Coachella games with the first unit. Ramsay noted that Duggan was at fault for the goal Minnesota conceded Saturday but chalked it up to the switch to a back four and the confusion that came from that.

“He’s definitely not the finished article, but he’s got some nice raw ingredients that are hard to come by,” Ramsay said.