In the heat of summer, few teams in Major League Soccer are hotter right now than Minnesota United FC.
The Loons are unbeaten in their last six regular season matches and have risen to third in the Western Conference table. They’ve also won three consecutive road games for the first time in club history following a 2-1 victory over Houston Dynamo FC Saturday night.
“I thought, considering the amount of games we’ve had in the period of the last three or four weeks and gone away to win in LA and gone away to win in Vancouver, come here and won away maybe we’ll get a little bit of credit for what we’ve been doing over the last few weeks,” Minnesota head coach Adrian Heath said after the match.
Usually the Loons’ recipe for success revolves around Emanuel Reynoso, who has nine goals and five assists in his third season in the league and earned MLS Player of the Week presented by Continental Tire honors for Week 21 of the 2022 campaign.
But the Argentine string-puller was sidelined Saturday with an ankle injury suffered in a 4-0 friendly win over English Premier League side Everton Wednesday at Allianz Field.
“Obviously a lot of our attack does rely on Reynoso, because he’s such a magical player,” defender Michael Boxall said. “When he is out injured or not on the field, we’ve got players who are more than capable - as they showed tonight and as they showed against Everton.
“We’ve got players who are more than capable of stepping up and it shows the type of characters we have when they can go a month, two months without getting a sniff and then when they do they are more than ready and capable of coming to a difficult place to play and helping get us three points.”
One such player is Bongokuhle Hlongwane, the U22 Initiative signing from South African Premier Division side Maritzburg United.
Hlongwane has been a regular in the Loons starting lineup this month and he enjoyed his best performance for his new club Saturday night, scoring his first MLS goal and adding an assist in a sterling 78-minute shift.
“He’s got a lot to learn still and he knows that,” Heath said. “If he keeps working as hard as he does, keeps listening to what people are telling him, keeps running forward, keeps trying to get in the right spots, which he has been doing… If he can start bringing goals to his game in the manner that say Robin Lod does when he plays there then when you get in that between seven and twelve goals a season from a wide area then that would be huge for us moving forward.”
Heath is hopeful Reynoso, who he said is out of a protective boot, can return in Week 23 when Minnesota United return home to take on the Portland Timbers Saturday (3 pm ET | ABC, ESPN Deportes).
