Eric Ramsay and Adrian Heath are from the United Kingdom, but the similarities between the Minnesota United coaches past and present pretty much end there.
Heath was a former high-profile player who, as a coach, gravitated towards a certain set of offensive aspects. The 63-year-old Englishman wore his heart on his sleeve and spoke freely about controversial referees or players he considered wanting on the pitch.
Ramsay played at a lower level in his college years, but was drawn to the sideline as a teenager. Now a coach, he relies on defensive principles that can be transformed into different formations and tactics. The 32-year-old Welshman appears poised, willing to give detailed answers that focus on overall improvement rather than ready-made sound bites.
After nearly seven full seasons with Heath, the Loons have transitioned this season to one of the starkest contrasts possible under Ramsay.
After coming three games into the season, Ramsay needed to settle in a foreign country while quickly learning about all aspects of his new club. A week later, he was training (and winning) his first match at Allianz Field on March 16th.
This week, Ramsay gave the Pioneer Press his first interview. In the club’s conference room inside the National Sports Center in Blaine, MLS’ youngest coach shared his adjustment to life in Minnesota, his origins and journey in the game, as well as his coaching philosophy.
Ramsay won three of the first six games (3-2-1). He was successful in many ways and learned lessons in losses. He did this while settling into a new home with his wife Sioned and their two children – 2-year-old Jack and 9-month-old Lilie. Eric’s in-laws helped the young family transition from Manchester, England. A daycare center was found for the children and Sioned made new friends.
“If you look at the six weeks we spent here, it feels like a genuine lifetime,” Ramsay said Wednesday. “Over the last two weeks, I’ve felt like I’ve really got everything under control here.”
During his first week on the job in mid-March, Ramsay decided to have one-on-one conversations with each player. He wasted no time and spoke to veteran players moments before the start of the first training session.
“To get a really good idea of what they’re like as people, their family circumstances, how they feel here,” explained Ramsay, who also speaks Spanish to the Loons’ Latino players. “I think if you can get that kind of personal element with a player to a certain extent, it really helps.”
Ramsay shared his own story. He grew up in the rural county of Shropshire in mid-Wales, where he was captain and one of the best players for local teams.
“I always had a feeling I was a good football player,” Ramsay recalled on Wednesday. “But I think when it was taken into the wider context of all the other aspiring players in Britain, I probably never had any real hope of being a proper professional. I played in the Welsh Premier League (Cymru) until I went to university. At 18 I had the opportunity to sign professionally with my local Welsh professional club TNS, The New Saints, but I always had my own training (in mind) from a very early age.
Ramsay, who thought about coaching at the age of 15, attended Loughborough University where he continued to play and gained a degree in sports science and management. He became head coach at Loughborough in 2012 and was then an academy coach at Swansea City from 2013 to 2016, when the Welsh side were in the English Premier League.
“All of a sudden, you’re completely immersed in the world of professional coaching and really racking up hour after hour on the grass,” Ramsay said. “(It) prepared me really, really well. I was lucky.”
Ramsay said immediately transitioning into coaching as an adult gave him a big advantage over coaches who play first.
“There are certain things that are missing, perhaps the feeling of the locker room, the weight of a career as a top player,” acknowledged Ramsay. “But you certainly gained from the prospect of thousands of hours on the grass, organizing sessions, communicating with players, performing in front of players.
“Ultimately, that’s the job,” he continued. “It’s communication, persuasion, being able to articulate your vision.”
Ramsay said his main coaching role models are men who, like him, didn’t have an extensive playing career.
“Obviously (Jose) Mourhino is probably a shining example for everyone, I would say at that moment, but a little closer to home:” Brendan Rodgers, Andre Villas-Boas and Graham Potter.
While Ramsay worked at Shrewsbury Town, Chelsea’s under-23s and the Wales national team, he also maintained studious side hustles. Ramsay spent years earning a doctorate in psychology, but his day job and growing family created more important demands and he had to postpone that for now. He has earned several coaching badges and mentored others.
“I always felt, almost selfishly, that it was a really good environment to develop my coaching skills,” Ramsay said. “Because you have often been, in my case, handing out the (UEFA) Pro license or the ‘A’ license in the UK to Champions League winners, World Cup winners, and you are a young coach, pivoting in your coaching beliefs as a model being presented to them.”
Ramsay said new coaches can have “a lot of charisma as players, not completely lose it, but suddenly when they’re in that coaching context, I think they realize very quickly that it’s — the two things are totally different. And I think maybe there was a point, early on in my career, where there was a little more questioning about whether you can be a top coach without having been a top player. I think it’s now unequivocally accepted.”
Ramsay met Dennis Lawrence in 2021 when they were mentors at UEFA and the Welsh Football Association.
“It’s a really cool thing between us,” Lawrence said. “We just found similarities in the way we think about the game. We enjoy working with each other.”
Lawrence has since joined MNUFC as Ramsay’s top assistant. At 49, he brings extensive experience as a player and coach for the Trinidad and Tobago national team and as an assistant for Everton, Wigan Athletic and Coventry City.
“We both agree on (how) we want to see the game played,” Lawrence said of Ramsay. “I think our principles, in terms of how we manage people, how we deal with individuals, the goals and aspirations we set for ourselves. He is a very, very hard-working young coach. I thought it was great to be able to accompany him on this journey.”
Cameron Knowles served as interim Loons coach for the first three games of the season as Ramsay finished his nearly three-year spell as an assistant at Manchester United. Knowles and Ramsay talked frequently on the phone, and Knowles could tell that Ramsay was eager to get to work.
The first week of training sessions could have been grueling, Knowles recalled. “I think he did a great job of being very rich in content with the sessions, with the meetings, very efficient with time, but making the most of these moments.”
In the last two games, Ramsay has changed the team’s shape – from a four-man to a five-man defensive line and from one to two forwards. He is willing to make substitutions at half-time, even if it means scrapping the plan that started the match.
“As a coach, to make changes, you sit there, and I certainly got to experience that in these few games,” Knowles said. “If you make a change, something will happen, right? It’s either going to be good or it’s going to be bad and you have to fight it. If you let that go, you have the ability to say, ‘I didn’t play with that,’ you know?
“So I think it takes a certain amount of courage to make changes, especially early ones,” said Knowles, who remains on Ramsay’s staff.
Ramsay doesn’t consider this courageous.
“I guess it’s part of the job,” he replied. “Players have to look at you and the team as a group of people who can make tangible decisions, that they can really stick to, that will really help them win games. I find this is often much more helpful than very generic feedback about mindset, struggle, attitude, passion, blah, blah, blah. I don’t think our group is lacking in that sense.”
Although Mourinho became known as “The Special One”, Knowles sees no pretense in his new boss.
“He’s very comfortable with what he doesn’t know,” Knowles said. “You enter a new league, you enter a new culture, a new environment, a new club, and it’s not, ‘Hey, I have all the answers.’”
And fans shouldn’t expect Ramsay’s post-match comments to go viral like his predecessor.
“I’m sure there will be times when people are crying out for a little more volatility and a little more emotion and passion,” Ramsay said of his behavior. “But I think largely over the course of a few years – or a career, certainly then – that’s a mentality that will serve me very well in the groups I work with, and in good stead, especially in MLS, where things change. so quickly.”
