This past week has been a lot of everything and a lot of nothing at once. On the field, Minnesota United FC seemed listless. Off the field, the onrushing MLS expansion party was clouded by the remaining legal and political barriers to the team’s stadium deal.
And then, all at once, everything and nothing happened. The team won at home against Tampa Bay, scoring twice — in large part due to their opponent’s blunders. The special session legislative deal fell apart. And the team’s party broke the news that everyone knew; 2017 entry, MLS expansion, and the news that nobody did; that the team would keep its name along with its crest and colors.
That’s a lot of news to come in one week and, strangely, none of it really matters much. We knew Minnesota were favored to beat Tampa at home. We knew the special session was increasingly on ice. We knew that the team would enter in 2017 and we knew that TCF Bank Stadium would host the club for a year, likely more. We’ve known some of these things for months. These are impactful developments, but none of them change the course that the club and its supporters are on.
The week’s lone surprise, the preservation of the uncelebrated name, is also the one of least material significance. We are on our sixth name for soccer in Minnesota, what difference would a seventh make?
Yet if you’re hunting for a keepsake from this remarkable week, you’d be hard pressed to find one more fitting than that word, “united”. There are valid reasons why Minnesota United FC have a claim to that name, from the club’s role uniting the state’s fractured soccer history, to the geographic fact of a divided Minneapolis-Saint Paul. But “united” is not mascot, it’s a statement of purpose. What does it mean to be united? Why is that an aspiration worth framing a club around?
This past week, we’ve been reminded of two things. The first is that nothing is perfect. The team lost on Sunday, won on Wednesday, and then tied on Saturday. They didn’t play especially poorly in their loss, nor especially well in their win, and were totally drained by travel and the weahter on the weekend. As I wrote early in the week, sometimes we need to accept that a thing we love is flawed and won’t meet expectations. That doesn’t mean it’s not good, and it obviously doesn’t mean it’s not worth loving. At the state legislature, the deal for the special session broke down, but as Brian Quarstad wrote on Thursday, ultimately the soccer stadium tax break is bi-partisan and still likely to get through. Democracy is messy and this is, on balance, probably a good thing.
The name “United” isn’t perfect either. Few of us would’ve chosen it in 2012/2013, had we been asked. The folks in Atlanta certainly didn’t choose it and their club selected it anyway. It’s a bit tired and certainly unoriginal. But it’s what we’ve got now and it never made a lick of sense to get rid of it. Which leads me to the second thing that this week ought to remind us of. All we have is each other.
When the team needed a lift, they knew they could count on the fans at the NSC to deliver it, regardless of previous results. When push came to shove at the state capitol, the legislative leaders could not come to a consensus to serve a greater aim and a lot of hard work came apart. Here we have an inspirational story and a cautionary one all wrapped up in the same news cycle. Here we see the importance of unity and the ruin of disunity.
The most poetic angle on this whole story is surely this: MLS, in moving to alter Minnesota’s name, challenged the club and its fans to earn the moniker. On the pages of this website, its predecessor, and through the Dark Clouds, True North Elite, and others, Minnesota fans united around a name that for all its faults was ours to share. Fans around the league joined us in calling out the league’s myopia and officious itch. And in the end, MLS (which we should not forget is a for-profit business) was persuaded to change their mind.
In its own deliverance, the meaning of the name, Minnesota United, has at last been affirmed.
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