This soccer season has elicited shouting from the back seats of a coach bus in Canada, trash talk at airports in California and laughter from cold tubs in Blaine.

Instead of individually scrolling and quietly staring at their own smartphones, a group of Minnesota United players have become rabid about playing the card game “Twenty Two.” It has helped Loon midfielder Ozzie Alonso bond with a handful of new teammates, including Miguel Ibarra, Darwin Quintero, Michael Boxall, Francisco Calvo, Angelo Rodriguez and others.

“We can have fun, play and bring the team together,” said Alonso, who joined Minnesota after 10 years with the Seattle Sounders. “It’s good.”

After Thursday’s training session in Blaine, the group was organizing yet another game, and the pasttime will be included during United’s next road trip. After a week off, the Loons (2-1) return to MLS action to face the New England Revolution (0-3-1) at 1 p.m. Saturday in Foxboro, Mass.

Loons coach Adrian Heath, 58, welcomes the card games as a relief from how so many current players have, like society at large, become addicted to their phones, constantly checking social media as well as obsessing over video games such as Fortnite.

“I think it’s a big problem for this generation; I’ve spoke about it before,” Heath said. “The reason that things like cards is good is because they interact. It’s funny when somebody drops the ace or whatever. It’s a really good environment.”

While Heath feels the benefits of the organic player-led card games, other coaches are experimenting with polarizing approaches on how to handle young players’ burgeoning tech habits.

Ralph Hassenhuttl, the 51-year-old coach of English Premier League club Southhampton, said Thursday he will block access to wifi in team hotels to cut off players’ gaming habits. He did the same thing at his previous club RB Leipzig in the German Bundesliga.

“We also had problems with players who were playing (video games) until 3 o’clock in the morning before a game,” Hassenhuttl said.

Meanwhile, new Arizona Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury, a millennial at age 39, said this week he plans to give NFL players “cell phone breaks” during football meetings.

“You start to see kind of hands twitching and legs shaking and you know they need to get that social media fix, so we’ll let ’em hop over there and then get back in the meeting and refocus,” said Kingsbury, who previously coached college football at Texas Tech for six years.

On road trips before the card-game tradition, United players spent more time on their phones or in their hotel rooms watching Netflix.

They started this season playing poker but wouldn’t let Woodbury defender Brent Kallman join. That was a smart move.

Kallman has been an amateur poker player at Minnesota casinos for years, and in November, he finished eighth out of 900 players at the Seminole Rock N’ Roll Poker Open in Florida. He just missed out on the final table but won $62,000.

“I was not happy about it,” Kallman said about being excluded from teammates’ poker hands. “They were just having fun with it, and I would feel a little bit bad, honestly. They are not good. They are good at ‘Twenty Two.’ I will give them that.”

While the Loons now obsess over “Twenty Two,” they said they only bet $5 and try to cut games off by 10 or 11 p.m. during road trips. They will start impromptu games at airport gates, on charter buses and in hotel lobbies. They will shower after practice and fire up another round at the National Sports Center in Blaine. They are so obsessed they’ve even played while receiving treatment on their muscles in cold tubs in the club’s training room.

“We play it everywhere,” Ibarra said. “… It gets competitive. Everybody wants to win. We get mad at people because you play some card that you’re not supposed to.”

The game consists of up to six players dealt seven cards and suits don’t matter. If, for example, someone lays a seven, the next player has to play a card of equal or higher value. If they can’t, they have to throw in their lowest card.

When all players are down to their last card, that value is how many points they receive. Once a player reaches 22 points, they’re eliminated. The others will continue and knock out players once they each reach 22. The surviving player wins.

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Loons acquire backup goalkeeper Adrian Zendejas from Nashville “They are probably going to blame me for always winning,” Ibarra said. “They always hate it because I always laugh. Whenever I win, I’m celebrating, so they don’t like that. They are always trying to celebrate against me. They are out and will go to the other players and try to make sure I lose.”

Sometimes Kallman and Duluth-born midfielder Ethan Finlay will join in the fun.

“It’s good,” Kallman said. “It makes guys put the phone down and spend some time with each other and hang out, build a little bit of chemistry. I think it’s really important on the road when you’ve got a lot of down time. Instead of everyone going to their rooms and doing their own thing, you have guys staying after meals and playing cards. It can only help.”