The Morning Rekrap: June 26, 2017

Minnesota United fans spent the weekend celebrating their 5th win of the season, a victory that matched a prediction that Grant Wahl made at the beginning of the season for their overall win total. When it was reported, Loons fans were in no way super defensive or touchy about it. Just look at the humble and modest people of the Upper Midwest celebrating the fact that at the end of June they sit in 9th place in the Western Conference table:

Can they lose points they already h?

Grant was definitely freaking out about a way too early prediction that was probably meant to be as blatantly hot-takey and provocative as it ended up being.

The good, self-effacing, hard working people of Minnesota aren’t mad though. After the Loons won their fifth game of the year they sang WonderWahl in a twist on their traditional victory celebration.

To be fair they have a great sense of humor about their team, terrific supporters, and probably have something to be upset about. Christian Ramirez not being called into the Gold Cup while Chris Wondolowski is on the squad is an abomination, but their team is still bad. Minnesota won the game against Portland despite giving up an own goal and getting a red card because Portland also gave up an own goal and got a red card. They followed up their historic fifth win by shipping two goals at home to Vancouver and fighting back for a draw in the second half on Saturday.

The Loons are still without a Designated Player and are still relying on NASL players to fill key roles on the team. Minnesota hasn’t been completely terrible but they also haven’t looked much better than an NASL team with Kevin Molino and Johan Venegas on it. The two very talented players picked up from MLS teams, who regularly feature for their national squads, have helped Minnesota manage not to be completely embarrassing so far this year. A team that took five months to do the two year job of building an MLS roster sitting in 9th place in the Western Conference and 20th overall with just five wins sounds about right.

Anyway... let’s see how other chickens are roosting this weekend:

The NY Red Bulls looked absolutely anemic against NYCFC as the Pigeons won at Red Bull Arena for the first time in the history of the Hudson River Derby. Sacha Kljestan looks like a boy who lost his gold fish and the Red Bulls haven’t been able to find their wings so far this year. Meanwhile Dax McCarty is a national team player, Chicago is unbeaten at home, and the Fire tamed the Orlando City Soccer Club winning 4-0 on Saturday.

Real Salt Lake is so bad that a coach can beat them 2-1 and get fired the next day. The soccer purists in San Jose decided that they had seen enough of Dominic Kinnear and assistant John Spencer. It’s never great to see anyone get fired, these are people with families whose lives will be disrupted due to losing their job, but MLS has simply passed Kinnear by. He’s been a mainstay in the league since 2005 and in that time it has changed a lot from the punt and rush style that dominated the pre-DP era and he simply hasn’t been able to adapt.

In 100 years, I never thought I’d see something like Haris Medunjanin asking the referee to rescind a red card against Luciano Acosta.

What kind of rival week is this?

Perhaps Medunjanin thought that D.C. United already looked like they were playing with 10 men and playing with just 9 would be too unfair. Maybe he’s so opposed to VAR that he wants to set an example to other players to just tell the referees how to do their jobs, but here in CONCACAF-Land if the referee plays ladron and gives you a gift like sending off your opponent’s best player you do not slap Diego, the Patron Saint of Undeserved Gifts and Bad Refereeing, in the face by telling the ref to put their card away. It just isn’t done.