Minnesota United, amid a frigid training camp, prepares to separate from Teemu Pukki

When Minnesota United trains in mid-January, the Loons do so in an inflated dome at the National Sports Center in Blaine. It’s warmer than the outside air — but not exactly warm, especially when the temperature was below zero this week.

Six below zero is a shock to everyone, but for those experiencing their first Minnesota winter, the pain was acute.

“I am trying to get used to it but just simply can’t,” said Argentina native Joaquín Pereyra, via translation from club translator Marleine Calderon. “I try to go out, but I’d rather stay home. [At training] once we start moving, our bodies get warm, but when I wake up in the mornings, it’s so hard to get up.”

Despite the cold, the Loons have brought back most of their roster from last year, though a couple of players are set to depart the squad before the beginning of the transfer window Jan. 31.

The club is on the verge of a contract buyout/transfer for striker Teemu Pukki. The 34-year-old scored four goals last season but played sparingly down the stretch after falling to third on the team’s depth chart.

Pukki, Minnesota’s highest-paid player as of last September, occupies both an international spot and a designated player spot on the team’s books. The transfer would be to Finnish giant HJK Helsinki — a move home for Pukki, who’s been away from his family for a year.

Only one first-team player on the roster — fullback Ethan Bristow, who hasn’t played for the Loons since 2023 — was absent for the entire week. Bristow was loaned out last year but trained with Minnesota in fall 2024 after a back injury put him out of action. Bristow doesn’t seem to figure into Minnesota’s plans, and he also occupies a valuable international spot on the roster, so it makes sense that the team might be trying to quietly move him.

Departures aside, Minnesota has other players signing up for more.

“For our family, we love this place,” said Wil Trapp, who signed a new contract to stay in Minnesota for a fifth season. “By the end of [last] year, we were in a position in which we could have been vying for a trophy — and I think as players, especially as you get older, you want to win.”

Forward Tani Oluwaseyi, who signed a contract extension through the 2027 season, was thinking more in terms of personal development.

“I could go to another situation and more or less end up in the exact same place that I’m at now, so I just thought it was better for me to stay here and compete and not run away from a challenge,” he said. “I think a challenge is what makes players get better, and I thought for me, this is the challenge I needed.”

Manager Eric Ramsay said he was happy with the team’s first week, which — despite some extra running and the punishing “beep test” — was meant to be something less than brutal.

“We wanted the players to feel like they’d taken some good steps forward, but they hadn’t absolutely exhausted themselves,” he said.

The Loons are set to head to Santa Barbara, Calif., on Monday, the first of two warm-weather trips before the season begins.

Even Pereyra, despite the cold, was looking on the bright side.

“It’s hard being far from family, and it is a hard reality to come to a city that is totally different, new and very cold,” he said. “But I’m here to grow as a player.”

Besides the 24 players on the first-team roster, the Loons have eight other players in camp. Four of them — Babacar Niang, Román Torres, Logan Dorsey and Kieran Chandler — are college draft picks.

Defender Britton Fischer is also training with the team and was the surprise winner of Friday’s beep test in an upset over Trapp. Fischer led MNUFC2 in minutes last season and has agreed on a new second-team deal with the Loons.

Besides young second-team standout Darius Randell, the Loons also have two extra goalkeepers: Cole Jensen, who spent two seasons as a backup with Inter Miami; and Wessel Speel, who was a first-team All-America at Duke last fall. With only two keepers on the roster between the first and second teams, reinforcements in goal are needed.

Minnesota announced a friendly on July 7 with Holstein Kiel of the Bundesliga, Germany’s top division — though by the time July rolls around, Kiel could well be bounced from German soccer’s big table.

Promoted this year to the Bundesliga for the first time in its history, Holstein Kiel is in second-to-last place, and it will have an uphill struggle to stay in the league.