Minnesota United coach Adrian Heath will soon ask his players to set goals ahead of the club’s inaugural season as a Major League Soccer expansion franchise, and reaching the playoffs likely will be their benchmark ahead of Friday’s kickoff against the Portland Timbers.

Playoffs are an understandable aspiration but should be read as PLAYOFFS!?! when considering the league’s 13 preceding expansion franchises. Only three MLS startups have advanced to the playoffs in their first seasons.

The Chicago Fire and Miami Fusion did it in 1998, when the league was in its third season with only 12 clubs. Miami has since folded; Chicago won the MLS Cup that year and hasn’t reached anywhere close to those heights since.

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Loons set new record low in 1-0 loss to Sporting Kansas City Since 2005, 11 clubs have joined the top domestic league and only one — the Seattle Sounders in 2009 — has advanced to the playoffs in their first season.

Meanwhile, the basement for expansion club fallouts includes the Vancouver Whitecaps, who won six of of 32 games in 2011, plus Chivas USA and Real Salt Lake, which both gave up at least 35 more goals than they scored in 2005.

Now among 22 clubs, Minnesota and fellow upstart Atlanta United need more basic objectives at their outsets: build team chemistry and establish a reputation as legitimate foes.

“There is the respect that needs to be earned,” said Loons midfielder Collen Warner, who played for the expansion Montreal Impact in 2012. “We have to be dialed in and know that there is a slimmer margin for error for new teams in the league.”

Minnesota joins MLS after establishing a soccer foundation dating back to the Kicks, who played at Metropolitan Stadium in the North American Soccer League from 1976-81. Since 1995, clubs known as the Thunder, Stars and United added layers to in-state history within the lower levels. Now, Minnesota heads to the big leagues.

The Pioneer Press spoke with a coach, two team captains and a veteran who had key roles after MLS expansion franchises climbed from the lower rungs of the soccer pyramid up to MLS. They shared anecdotes about their pinnacles and warnings on possible pratfalls.

SEATTLE SOUNDERS

The NBA’s Supersonics left Seattle to become the Oklahoma City Thunder before the 2008-09 season, and the Sounders came in with a boom. They had 22,000 season tickets during their first season in Qwest Field, the huge home of the NFL’s Seahawks.

“With the Sonics leaving, it left kind of a void,” said Sounders goalkeeper Kasey Keller, a native of Olympia, Wash. “There was this local pride of, we are going to get behind it because we feel so betrayed by the way the Sonics left town. There is no question that it added to the whole experience and then the first year being successful.”

Keller, a U.S. national team player and veteran of four World Cups, was one of the Sounders’ marquee signing. At 38, he had experience in the German Bundesliga, Spain’s La Liga and left Fulham of the English Premier League before joining his hometown club.

Keller said the Sounders benefited from their ownership paring with the Seahawks, which created a professional environment similar to what he was used to in Europe.

“When you know you are being treated well, it’s amazing the little extra things you will do,” Keller said. “If you think you are being taken advantage of and are not being treated well, there is even a subconscious way of saying, ‘Am I going to make that run in the 90th minute to get in the box and help defend or get in the box and help score a goal? Or am I not?’ ”

Despite a 30-game season, Keller placed added importance on the first home game.

“The last thing I wanted to do was have everybody go home and say, ‘Meh, that was all right,’ ” said Keller, now a soccer analyst for ESPN. “We thought they’d come back, but maybe not with the same energy. … There are always detractors to soccer in America anyway.”

With an announced crowd of 32,523, the Sounders won their debut 3-0 over the New York Red Bulls, the MLS Cup runner-up the previous year.

“There were converts,” Keller said. “I think that (first game) helped and that put stuff straight away into people’s minds that we are doing some things right.”

Under coach Brian Schmetzer in 2008, the Sounders finished 10-10-10 and lost in the United Soccer League quarterfinals. Seattle then hired Sigi Schmid away from the MLS Cup champion Columbus Crew, with Schmetzer as an assistant. Schmetzer succeeded Schmid during the 2016 season and led the Sounders to the MLS Cup.

“There is no question that the experience that Sigi brought in the expansion process was instrumental,” Keller said.

Keller said the club’s immediate goal in 2009 was to make the playoffs. Avoiding injuries and allowing only 29 goals — a low among all 13 expansion franchises — paved the way for the Sounders to advance to the Western Conference semifinals, where they lost a hard-fought series to the Houston Dynamo.

“Arguably one of the best expansion launches in all of pro sports,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber boasted at the time.

Keller, who retired at age 41 in 2011, said it gets more difficult for expansion teams to make the playoffs with each passing year. “Some of it is the league is getting more and more competitive and getting more and more diluted,” he said.

Minnesota’s perspective: United could see a crowd of 35,000 attend its nationally televised home opener against Atlanta at TCF Bank Stadium on March 12. The club has established a season-ticket base of more than 10,000, with the goal of approaching 12,000.

United doesn’t have a signing with the broad name recognition of Keller, but speedy wingers Josh Gatt and Miguel Ibarra have made appearances on the U.S. national team.

Like Schmid, new Loons coach Adrian Heath provides MLS experience that former United coach Carl Craig lacked in his one season leading Minnesota in 2016. Heath guided Orlando City from championships in USL into MLS in 2015, and the Lions (12-14-8) were the fourth-most successful expansion franchise in league history, missing the playoffs by five points.

VANCOUVER WHITECAPS

After Vancouver won its MLS debut in 2011, Whitecaps coach Teitur Thordarson was winless in his next 11 matches and sacked in late May. Tom Soehn, the club’s director of soccer operations, was named interim head coach for the rest of the season. The team finished 6-18-10, the third-worst record among MLS expansion teams.

With a few matches left in that last-place season, players learned that another coach would take over in 2012. The squad already had to adjust from Thordarson’s system to Soehn’s — and Martin Rennie was going to be next.

“That plays with the players’ heads,” said Jeb Brovsky, a rookie midfielder with Vancouver that season.

While Soehn had control of roster construction, he didn’t have a say on coaching decisions. In 2010, Thordarson took the Whitecaps to the USSF semifinals with a 10-5-15 record but couldn’t clear the hurdle to MLS.

“You are used to watching the standards of one league and then are expected to quickly acclimate to the standards of another league,” Soehn said. “It’s almost better for a coach to sit out and watch MLS a year and that way to have a better understanding of what MLS is about.”

Soehn, now an assistant coach with the New England Revolution, recalls the Whitecaps taking about nine players from USSF to MLS. “Looking back, we took too many over because it was quite a big step for some of those players,” he said.

Soehn played on the first Chicago Fire team that won the MLS Cup under coach Bob Bradley, a former U.S. national team manager. “(Bradley) had a real vision of how he wanted to build,” Soehn said. “He didn’t carry any players into it from a lower league. He basically started from scratch, which I think is easier.”

Back to Vancouver, Soehn was able to upgrade the Whitecaps roster in 2012, and they made the playoffs with an 11-13-10 record.

“It’s going through the bruises of the first year,” said Soehn, whose name was mentioned along with Heath’s in reports on possible United coaches before the end of the 2016 season. “It’s reanalyzing your roster and knowing who is good enough and where you need to make changes and build on the core of guys that you have.”

Minnesota’s perspective: When Heath was hired in November, he stressed the necessity for patience from owner Bill McGuire and his partners to see his three-year plan come to fruition. By year three, Heath said he wants to be contending for championships.

In Orlando, Heath was fired with a 16-18-16 record in 1 1/2 seasons. He was 4-4-8 in 2016 when he was ousted.

Last season in NASL, the Loons finished 11-13-8 and missed the four-team playoffs. United sporting director Manny Lagos brought seven players from that roster to MLS. Left back Justin Davis and striker Christian Ramirez are two likely candidates to start on opening day against the Timbers.

Brovsky, who also partook in the expansion processes in Montreal and New York City FC, played for the Loons last season before he tore his ACL and had blood clot complications in the offseason. If he’s able to display a full recovery later this spring, he could be the eighth United player to make the jump to MLS.

Brovsky said most of United’s players from NASL have been dying for the chance to play in MLS, making communication from coaches and the front office key.

“There is nothing worse than going into an expansion year with all the players, especially the guys who are making the jump, and not knowing what is asked of them from the coach or from the club,” Brovsky said. “They are just going to revert back to what they were doing in USL and NASL because this is what’s gotten them to this point.”

PORTLAND TIMBERS

About two weeks before their debut MLS season in 2011, the Timbers added midfielder Jack Jewsbury in a trade with the Kansas City Wizards. A few days later, the eight-year MLS veteran was named Timbers team captain by coach John Spencer.

“It was kind of eye-opening because I hadn’t been there long,” Jewsbury said. “I had missed the majority of preseason. … But you could tell with a young team they needed some guys to step up in different roles and so I was glad to take that role on, especially being the first year of the franchise.”

Brovsky said having MLS veterans like Jewsbury is key to expansion franchise success because of the quirks to the league and the miles racked up on the cross country travel schedule.

In their inaugural season, the Timbers were great at home (9-5-3) and bad on the road (2-9-6). “I think the lack of consistency comes when you have a core group of guys that you don’t know what to expect,” Jewsbury said. “You’ve only seen guys on video and on the training pitch.”

The Timbers finished 11-14-9, 14 points ahead of the Whitecaps. Although those clubs came into the league during the same season, Jewsbury said the Timbers didn’t look at what was going on up north as a measuring stick.

“It wasn’t us identifying ourselves or comparing ourselves to the other expansion franchise,” said Jewsbury, now the Timbers’ director of business development. “I don’t think that really happened.”

Unlike Seattle and other clubs that come into the league solo, Vancouver and Portland had to compete for spots in the SuperDraft of collegiate players and the expansion draft of players left available for selection from other MLS rosters.

Picking second in the SuperDraft, Portland selected Darlington Nagbe, a key contributor during the Timbers’ MLS title run in 2015 and current member of the U.S. national team.

With the first SuperDraft pick, Vancouver selected Omar Salgado, who left the Whitecaps after four lackluster seasons and now plays in Mexico’s top league, Liga MX.

Minnesota’s perspective: The Loons will have a temporary home stadium for up to two full seasons while their custom-built arena is planned for construction in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood. It’s unclear what kind of home-field advantage the Loons and their supporters groups can establish at the University of Minnesota’s 52,000-seat football stadium.

Throughout the expansion process, Minnesota and Atlanta often have been linked to each as conjoining, if not identical, twins. Atlanta announced Friday that season tickets have eclipsed 30,000 and has made splashy signings, including former Barcelona and Argentina manager Tata Martino. Meanwhile, Minnesota has worked to curate a roster from many different, mostly international, channels.

With the first pick in the SuperDraft, Minnesota took Abu Danladi, a forward from UCLA; Atlanta went second and took Syracuse defender Miles Robinson.

It’s obviously way too early to determine which club has the upper hand in many categories, much less how they rank among all the expansion clubs. But it won’t take long to see; the teams’ the first head-to-head test will come March 12 with United’s home opener against Atlanta.