Minnesota United, nearing transfer window, will take its full roster into a pair of home games

MINNESOTA UNITED | ANALYSIS

There was something of a back-to-school air to Minnesota United training on Tuesday morning.

For the first time since the first week of June, zero players were away with their national teams. Tani Oluwaseyi and Dayne St. Clair were present and accounted for, having finally returned from their Copa América sojourn with Canada.

St. Clair, who played two games with Canada — one friendly, one in the tournament — was frustrated to have missed so much of Minnesota’s season. He criticized MLS for not taking time off during the tournament. “They say it’s ‘club and country,’ not ‘club or country,’ ” the goalkeeper said.

Oluwaseyi had a better time, playing in all but one of Canada’s games at Copa América, and starting for the first time in the third-place game against Uruguay. “I didn’t see the opportunity happening at like the beginning of May,” he said. “To go from there to having five or six caps for my national team, I think it’s a dream come true, and I think my confidence is sky high right now.”

Welcome back, manager Eric Ramsay said.

“We can genuinely look at it as a very fresh part of the season,” he said. “I don’t want to overplay the importance of two players, because not everything spins around them. But I think in our unique situation, it is a huge difference-maker.”

It’s a big week for Minnesota, in two senses. First, the Loons play home games, on Wednesday against D.C. United and Saturday against San Jose, against two of the bottom six teams in the overall MLS standings.

It’s a golden opportunity to pick up points and restart a season that has stalled since the international break at the beginning of June. The Loons earned 28 points in the season’s first 15 games but have picked up just two in their past eight. That puts them at 8-9-6, in a tie for ninth place, the final playoff spot.

With 11 games — effectively a third of the season — to go, the Loons may be in the playoff picture, but they have a mountain to climb to earn anything in terms of playoff seeding. MNUFC is four points out of seventh place, the last place that avoids the 8-vs-9 wild-card game. It’s also eight points out of fourth place and a chance to have home-field advantage in a best-of-three first-round playoff series.

“We will approach this week trying to get six points, there’s no other way of putting that,” Ramsay said. ”We’re not taking anything for granted, but we know at home with as close to a full contingent as we’ve had for a long while, we can be as good a match as anyone else can be for any team in this league.”

Second, the league’s transfer window opens Thursday and opens the floodgates for Minnesota to make changes to its squad.

So far, the only player officially signed for Minnesota is English attacker Samuel Shashoua, a product of the Tottenham Hotspur youth system who’s played the past four seasons in Spain’s second division. Shashoua was announced as a new signing at the beginning of June and has been training with the team since but can’t play until the transfer window officially opens.

In an interview on the team’s official podcast, Shashoua said Khaled El-Ahmad, Loons chief soccer officer, had tried to sign him several times when El-Ahmad was in charge of English side Barnsley FC and that interest carried over after El-Ahmad took the Minnesota job.

The Loons also are interested in Genoa forward Kelvin Yeboah, who is already well-traveled at 24. Yeboah, who has played for the Italian youth national teams, has already featured in the top divisions in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Austria. Most recently, he was on loan from Genoa to Belgian side Standard Liege, where he scored six goals in 14 appearances.

Defender DJ Taylor and midfielder Wil Trapp did not participate in Tuesday’s session, as they work back from hamstring injuries. Moses Nyeman (ankle) and Clint Irwin (groin) did participate, as did center back Hugo Bacharach, who hasn’t played since making his MLS debut April 13.

Defender Joseph Rosales also participated, after leaving the game against Houston 10 minutes before the final whistle. Ramsay said the wingback asked out of the game, as he was exhausted and felt like he wasn’t helping the squad.

“He’s a very explosive player that relies on energy and changes of pace and being able to play at a certain intensity,” Ramsay said. “I think that over the course of him clocking up far more minutes than we would have liked, his form has suffered. We’ve got to be really careful with how we use him if we want to get him back to his best.”