Analysis: Minnesota United employees heckled team to help prepare for penalty shootout

MINNESOTA UNITED | ANALYSIS

Minnesota United’s penalty-shootout victory over Real Salt Lake had many architects. There was goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair, whose presence helped force two RSL players to miss the net with their attempts. There was defender Jefferson Díaz, who calmly converted his sudden-death effort despite not being one of the five originally selected penalty takers. There was manager Eric Ramsay, who insisted that his team practice penalties multiple times in the lead-up to the game.

And, of course, there was the entire MNUFC front office.

On Monday, a huge percentage of the club’s employees were on hand at the Loons’ training session, in the hopes of providing some sort of extra pressure on the players during their penalty-taking practice. Club employees were divided into two groups, one behind each net, and did their best to heckle and pressure the players.

It was fun and lighthearted, and there was pizza for everyone afterward. But after the game, Ramsay said it made a difference, too.

“I would like to think that probably without that, the players wouldn’t have had the level of conviction that largely they showed,” he said. “It was a bit of fun. It was probably good for the club’s morale. But there was a real sense of us being intentional behind that.”

Being booed by the accounting department isn’t exactly preparation for being booed by an entire stadium, but it did give the players a chance to practice the long walk from the halfway line to the penalty spot. And at least in the case of a few fun-loving players like Franco Fragapane and Devin Padelford, a chance to practice antagonizing the crowd after scoring.

“Obviously, you can practice as much as you want, but what comes into play is the pressure,” said St. Clair. “So having people in those moments to kind of create a little bit more pressure, having people behind the net making noise, kind of makes it a little bit more realistic.”

In the end, after a game that was scoreless in regulation, Ramsay said he was surprisingly calm during the shootout, in the sense that he’d felt the club had done everything it could to prepare. “We turned over every stone we could in the build-up,” he said. “It felt like if we won, it would have justified the work. If we lost, there wouldn’t have been anything we could’ve done all that different. And I just had a good feeling based on the preparation that we’ve done yesterday, and the general level of conviction across the group.”

In Minnesota’s final regular-season game against St. Louis, Ramsay changed all three forwards in the 68th minute, a line change that led almost immediately to a goal.

Tuesday, Ramsay waited again until the 68th minute — but this time, it was only two subs.

Once again, Tani Oluwaseyi and Sang Bin Jeong came on to add some energy to the front line, and Robin Lod and Joaquín Pereyra gave way. But this time, Ramsay left Kelvin Yeboah on the field, rather than subbing in Fragapane.

“We wanted to make sure that we had some legs on either side of Kelvin as the game went on and, obviously, didn’t want to take Kelvin off because it felt like he was showing signs of getting a chance,” said Ramsay. “Irrespective of how the game’s going, Kelvin will always find a moment to be a threat, and that proved to be the case.”

Yeboah was the chief creator of both of the Loons’ scoring opportunities down the stretch, first setting up Oluwaseyi, then beating two defenders and shooting on his own. Between the two opportunities, they forced three really good saves from RSL keeper Zac MacMath, who was the only reason Minnesota didn’t end up with a victory in regulation.

The chances were part of a madcap second half that saw both teams put five shots on target. It was the reverse of the first half, as well as a reverse of the game between these two teams a little over three weeks ago. In those three halves overall, both teams had five total shots on target.

“We didn’t like the first 15, 20 minutes of the game; that wasn’t how we intended to look — far too deep, far too passive, not building pressure well enough,” said Ramsay. “We were able to make a couple corrections at halftime and nudge the players to be more aggressive, less passive, more front foot in the way we defended. That started to force the game a little bit, but then as we open up, so does the game.”

Minnesota and RSL have now played more than two full games without either team scoring. For that, you have to go back to April 6, in St. Paul, when Oluwaseyi scrambled home a goal in the 86th minute to earn the Loons a 1-1 draw.

Ramsay isn’t going to change how his team plays for Game 2 on Saturday, but he’s counting on the Allianz Field energy to carry his squad.

“The atmosphere at home, the energy at home, obviously the lack of altitude that you experience [in St. Paul] — that will all contribute to us looking different, more exciting, more energetic, [and] more dynamic,” Ramsay said.

St. Clair was focused on St. Paul, too. “We’re definitely looking at [Game 2] as a must-win because we don’t want to come back here,” said the keeper.