Last night Minnesota United won their fourth straight league match and are now unbeaten in six straight following their second straight midweek match. But the schedule is only getting more crowded and will continue to be that through most of the season. Cameron Knowles did not rotate his squad from Saturday and it's paid off as the Loons have been unbeatable with the starting eleven retained across the last three league matches. Knowles was thrilled with his team's performance last night, saying:
“Fantastic performance. This is a difficult place to play. It's been a long time since Dallas has lost a game here, and so to come in and keep that, to keep that run going, to get a clean sheet against a team that's been scoring a lot of goals and scoring them early in games. It's just a remarkable performance from the guys.”
Only one goal was scored across the 90 minutes plus stoppage time and that came off the boot of Anthony Markanich. The man known for scoring goals with his head, has scored two goals this season, both with his feet.
“It was great. [He] arrives in a good position, follows it and has the composure to put it away," said MNUFC manager Cameron Knowles. "We were hopeful that we would get chances and wanted to be composed in those moments, knowing that we might not get as many here as we would like as it is a palace to play. I thought at that moment he was very composed and stuck with the play.”
The win was the first one goal match for MNUFC since their loss to Nashville back in early March. Since that loss on 7 March the Loons have either scored two goals or no goals in regulation. But unlike six weeks ago, Minnesota United is now into one of the most congested parts of the season. Two more midweek matches are guaranteed before the World Cup break and that could expand to three if Minnesota wins in San Jose on Tuesday.
“I think you have to give a ton of credit to the players. It is not easy, the volume of games that they have played, but then also the credit to them needs to come for how hard they work in training because this is why you have heavy loading days in the midweek of training to prepare you for when this time comes," Knowles said following Wednesday's match. "Again, I have said it a number of times that our performance staff and medical staff are fantastic. The way that they manage the players in terms of that load and getting them ready for this type of stretch and then the way that they help them recover, It is second to none and they deserve a ton of credit, too. It is going to continue getting busier. We will have a tighter turnaround after Saturday into Tuesday's game. So we will have to be mindful as we look ahead.”
With only two days between matches there's a lot of questions heading into LAFC. How much will the club rotate players, are there any injuries following Wednesday night in Frisco, and will there be a slight style change to defeat a very good LAFC side.
“First, we have got to assess the players and see where we are at injury-wise and make sure everyone comes through this one healthy, and then we look at the next one. We take Saturday [versus LAFC] first and then after that we will look ahead to Tuesday [at San Jose Earthquakes]," said Knowles. "Certainly the tighter turnaround makes it a little bit difficult and also the volume of games that we keep stacking up and so we are going to have to be mindful, we’ve got a number of guys who have been clocking up some serious minutes and significant mileage too in the games.”
MNUFC heads into Saturday afternoon's match with a 2-1-0 (W-D-L) record at Allianz Field and a six match home winning streak dating back to last October. Kickoff for Saturday's match is listed for 3:45pm and the match will actually kick off at 3:55pm as confirmed by the club on Tuesday.
