Analysis: Minnesota United takes on St. Louis City with MLS playoff positioning at stake, but manager Eric Ramsay warns there are no soft spots

Minnesota United will be playing for playoff seeding Saturday night, at home against St. Louis City, the team’s final regular-season game. The Loons, currently seventh in the Western Conference, want to at least stay there — thus avoiding the 8-versus-9 wild-card game, a one-off to qualify for the first round of the playoffs.

They can do that by winning against St. Louis, the third-worst team in the West, or if the Vancouver Whitecaps lose or draw — which, given that the Whitecaps are visiting fourth-place Real Salt Lake, is a very real possibility. (There are also complicated scenarios in which Minnesota finishes above Vancouver, even if the Loons draw and the Whitecaps win — depending on how many goals Vancouver would win by, and even how many goals both teams score.)

Minnesota could also finish as high as fifth place — but in terms of first-round playoff opponents, there are no desirable matchups. “I think you can make arguments for any of the teams,” manager Eric Ramsay said. “It’s probably not worth us reading all that much into that, and focusing on getting over the line with St. Louis, and attacking whatever comes our way.”

The LA Galaxy and LAFC will finish 1-2 in the West, with the top seed still up for grabs, but playing either team is a tall order. The Galaxy have won three in a row, LAFC four in a row, and either would be heavily favored to advance against the Loons.

As for the other two top-four spots, one will be filled by Real Salt Lake and the other by Seattle. Playing RSL means at least one road trip back to high altitude, and possibly a second trip for a deciding game in the best-of-three first-round series — and for all the Utah side has struggled down the stretch, they’re still unbeaten in their past five games.

Seattle, meanwhile, is Minnesota’s nemesis. Even if the Sounders weren’t the league’s hottest team, the Loons have already lost to Seattle three times this season, and have lost every game they’ve ever played in the Emerald City.

It’s hard to imagine Minnesota winning that playoff series, unless you’re Loons midfielder Hassani Dotson, who hails from the Seattle suburbs. “I know we don’t have the best history against them, but when we played them recently at home, I thought we were unlucky to come away with the loss,” he said. “We’ll see how the ball falls.”

On the flip side, Minnesota is probably the one team in the bottom half of the West playoff bracket that no team wants to play. Houston is beset by injuries, Colorado and Vancouver have both lost three in a row, and Portland failed to score in consecutive home games despite having plenty to play for.

The international break was reasonably kind to Minnesota, in terms of overtaxing players. Robin Lod and Teemu Pukki, who was returning from injury, both played twice for Finland, but Pukki played 30 minutes total and Lod played 105, and neither has played since last Sunday. Michael Boxall played only one of New Zealand’s two games — though his travel schedule to Oceania and back was insane — and neither Dayne St. Clair nor Tani Oluwaseyi played for Canada.

The only concerns might be for center back Carlos Harvey, who played the entire match for Panama on Tuesday, and wingback Joseph Rosales, who played nearly two full matches for Honduras in five days.

For Ramsay, given everything that’s happened — a summer of missing players, his own late arrival, the changes in the front office — 2024 has already been a good year for Minnesota, no matter where the Loons end up in the playoff picture.

“It’s been a really successful season, when you take it as a whole and you consider everything that we’ve had to contend with,” he said. “It could not be more of a transition year, when you consider the circumstances around me coming into the squad, the way things worked over the course of those two summer months. … We’re in the playoffs, we’re fighting for fifth. I think when you take that as a position, we would have bitten someone’s hand off for that a couple of months ago. I think anything from this point onwards is a bonus.”