When Eric Ramsay arrived at Minnesota United three matches into last season, the new head coach put his initial focus on the Loons defense. That foundational element is engrained in the Welshman’s ethos, and it won’t go away during his second season in charge of MNUFC.

“I feel like we were and will continue to be very strong defensively,” Ramsay said in January. “Very well organized, where the players are really bought into a very compact way of defending. That is the elite level of the game. There is no team that reaches the elite level that doesn’t show those elite characteristics.”

Defensive midfielder Wil Trapp has not experienced anything quite like it in his now-13-year MLS career: “I don’t remember seeing this level of detail defensively in other teams I’ve played on.”

That defense-first mentality helped the Loons finish sixth in the West and advance to the conference semifinals of the MLS Cup Playoffs in 2024.

But in 2025, Ramsay had a standard runway to build up to the season opener, which comes at 3:30 p.m. Saturday at Los Angeles FC. He took advantage of the full six-week preseason — not the handful of training days he was left with before taking the keys for his first match last March, which, coincidentally, was also against LAFC.

Preseason gave Ramsay time to tinker with formations that might better suit his roster. He brought to the forefront a set-up of two forwards (instead of one) during preseason matches. He has kept the five-man back line that became a calling card last season, and three midfielders in between in a 5-3-2 formation.

Ramsay appears poised to unveil that new shape on national TV against one of the league’s marquee teams this weekend. It’s a set-up that showcases athletic strikers Kelvin Yeboah and Tani Oluwaseyi on the field at the same time. That duo might leave opposing defenders quaking in 2025.

“That could be a real threat for us,” Ramsay said.

Oluwaseyi started hot last season, earning a call-up to the Canadian men’s national team and finishing with eight goals and five assists in 1,084 MLS minutes last season. Yeboah joined MNUFC in the summer transfer window, and the Italian/Ghanian produced seven goals and one assist in only 709 minutes.

One of Ramsay’s defining characteristics last season was his pragmatic flexibility — and that remained in preseason when he shifted to a 4-4-2 formation in the final preseason game. Look for more adaptations on how the Loons play in 2025 — but only up to a point.

“You can’t be everything, and if you try to be, you end up being nothing,” Ramsay said. “I think that is a really important part of my role as a coach. I’m strong enough to recognize what it is that we do well and what is it we can be competitive around and making sure that we don’t stray too far away from that.”

Loons Chief Soccer Officer Khaled El-Ahmad likes the flexibility in styles of play and works to bring in versatile players to play different roles in the pitch.

But MNUFC needs to be better in possession. The club averaged 44.3% possession of the ball last season, which was second-lowest in MLS, according to FBref.com.

“The evolution of potentially being a little bit more patient and dominant on the ball (in 2025) — because some of our possession numbers weren’t great,” El-Ahmad said. “At times we need to be more careful when we have it. One: to be able to rest. And two: so we don’t give it up in transition.”

But it’s “possession with purpose,” El-Ahmad said. The Loons will never be a possession-dominant team such as MLS Cup champion L.A. Galaxy, which were third best with 56.7% possession last year.

“We want to strike a balance of being a team that can attack quickly but also recognizes the moments at which we can ease our way into the opposition half with more controlled possession and keeping the team connected,” Ramsay said. “It’s a structural thing, but it’s also an individual thing.”

The two-striker formation, especially with two goal-oriented forwards in Yeboah and Oluwaseyi, might not be conducive to substantial gains in possession. That set-up takes off a technical, on-ball connector off the field. Think Robin Lod not being able to create in the middle of the park like the Finn usually does.

Trapp said a big preseason focus was on what they can and should do with the ball. “When we win the ball in good positions, can we be calm enough know the options and understand how we can progress through them quickly?” he asked.

Then when line-breaking passes don’t present themselves immediately, Trapp used a football metaphor to describe what should come next. Be like a quarterback and take the check-down pass to the running back.

“When you defend a lot, you win the ball, you’re like, ‘Ugh, OK, now I just want to pass it to somebody so I can breathe,’ ” Trapp said. “But those are the moments, actually, it’s where the psychology needs to be: How can I get closer to (teammates) so we can keep the ball?”

Ramsay acknowledged defensive “kinks” in a 5-3-2 system. “If your back five gets pinned in by two wide players on the outside, you are defending the width of the pitch with a three and a two and that can feel like it’s difficult to get pressure on the ball,” he explained. “But again, we make certain tradeoffs in that sense because there is a certain amount of the pitch that we defend certain distances from top to bottom.”

The goal for the Loons defensive shape under Ramsay is a compactness, especially in the defensive third of the field, that doesn’t exceed 20 yards from forwards to backline. This is a stringent standard.

“Passes inside become duels; everything is a contested ball,” Trapp said.

But in attack, the Loons want to unleash Yeboah and Oluwaseyi more on counter attacks and runs in behind the opponent’s back line.

“Where its like, (forget about) it, lets go!” Trapp said. “It’s something that creates luck in those moments. And I think we’ve been doing that more and more.”