Back from a deceiving 3-0 loss Wednesday at Atlanta, Minnesota United remains firmly positioned in the playoff race with a newfound formula that, after three months of play, has produced a winning record despite a dead-even goal differential.
Fewer goals scored, but just as few conceded.
Midfielder Ethan Finlay's volleyed, winning goal against his former Columbus teammates three games ago remains the only goal scored definitively by a United attacker in six weeks.
Notably quiet is offensive star Darwin Quintero. So dangerous a season ago, he has scored just one of his five goals in the run of the play — the other four were penalty kicks — and not one since April 19 at Toronto.
Yet United is 6-5-3, fifth in a Western Conference that sends seven teams to the playoffs, because it has been stifling at new Allianz Field.
With Philadelphia up next Sunday afternoon, United has allowed one goal in its past five home games. It has recorded four clean sheets at Allianz Field — and another at San Jose — with the season's midpoint still three games away.
A first-half goal by Atlanta ended the Loons' most recent scoreless streak at 251 minutes. Josef Martinez's two goals in second-half stoppage time made the outcome look, in United coach Adrian Heath's estimation, "like a heavy defeat, but it was far from that."
Finlay credits a simple mathematical equation for improving a team that hasn't scored any more goals (21) than it has allowed:
10 > 8
"We are defending as a group," Finlay said. "We've got the guys up front that have been coming back and making it a '10.' In the past, we were really playing as two blocks of four."
Finlay credits defensive midfielders Ozzie Alonso and Jan Gregus for unifying the team's front lines with its back. He also credits attackers up front who are willing to drop back and do their part with the defending.
Heath deems it 11 players willing to become one, or what he calls "the collective."
"The group has started getting closer," Heath said. "They're holding each other accountable to what we're asking. People defending properly, putting the group before the individual."
Veteran defender Michael Boxall calls Alonso and Gregus, among others, "a few older heads" with the experience and demeanor needed to manage the team's 1-0 victory over Houston on May 25, when United played one man down while rookie Hassani Dotson sought medical care.
"Maybe it's a little bit true we work more as a unit," Gregus said. "We can see we have to be to win games. That's how it needs to be. When we started the season, maybe we thought we'd score some goals; it's OK not to defend. But that's not true. Everybody defends and everybody needs to take part in the offensive, as well."
Take away a late goal that defeated D.C. United — created by right back Romain Metanire, credited to striker Angelo Rodriguez after the ball might have ticked him — and United's back line has scored three of the team's four goals in the past six weeks.
But if they defend with the collective, then they, too, score with all playing their part.
"Early on in the season, that looked like a big plus for us," Heath said. "The last few weeks, I'm not silly, you see the goals-for column. There haven't been enough. We have not created an awful lot, but we have created at home. … We've got to keep believing in the guys we've got. We've all been through it.
"You have a spot where you don't know if you're going to score and, suddenly, it turns for you and you get a little run going. That's what we need."
