Eric Ramsay and Adrian Heath both hail from the U.K. But similarities between the past and present Minnesota United head coaches pretty much cease there.
Heath was a former high-level player, who as a manager gravitated toward a certain set of attacking aspects. The 63-year-old Englishman wore his heart on his sleeve and would speak freely on controversial officiating or players he felt fell short on the pitch.
Ramsay played into his collegiate years but was drawn to the sideline even as a teenager. Now a coach, he relies on defensive principles that can be shape-shifted into different formations and tactics. The 32-year-old Welshman comes across as even-keeled, willing to give detailed answers that focus on the big-picture improvement, not ready-made sound bites.
After nearly seven full seasons with Heath, the Loons swung this season to one of the starkest contrasts possible in Ramsay.
After arriving three games into the season, Ramsay needed to get settled in a foreign country, while quickly learning about all aspects of his new club. A week later, he was coaching (and winning) his first match at Allianz Field on March 16.
This week, Ramsay granted the Pioneer Press his first sit-down interview. From the club’s conference room inside the National Sports Center in Blaine, the youngest coach in MLS shared his adjustment to life in Minnesota, his origins and journey in the game as well as his coaching philosophy.
Ramsay has won three of his opening six games (3-2-1). He’s had success in a variety of ways and learned lessons in losses. He has done it 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 parents-in-law have helped the young family transition from Manchester, England. A nursery has been found for the children, and Sioned has made new friends.
“If you look back to the six weeks we’ve had here, it feels like a genuine lifetime,” Ramsay said Wednesday. “The last two weeks, I felt like I really got to grips with everything here.”
During his first week on the job in mid-March, Ramsay set out to have one-on-one conversations with every player. He wasted no time, chatting with veteran players in the moments before his first training session started.
Minnesota United coach Eric Ramsay tells instructions to his players in the first of a MLS game against Sporting Kansas City at Allianz Field in St. Paul on Saturday, April 27, 2024. Minnesota United beat Sporting Kansas City, 2-1. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
“To get a really good feel for how they are as people, their family circumstances, how they find being here,” explained Ramsay, who also can also speak Spanish with the Loons’ Latino players. “I think if you can get that sort of personal element with a player up to a certain point, then that really helps.”
Ramsay has shared his own story. He grew up in the rural mideastern Wales county of Shropshire, where he was a captain and one of the best players on local teams.
“I always had a sense of being a good footballer,” Ramsay recalled Wednesday. “But I think when that was taken into the wider context of every other aspiring player in Britain, I probably never had any real hope of being a proper professional. I played in the Welsh (Cymru) Premier League up until I was in university. At 18, I had a chance to sign professionally with my local Welsh professional club, TNS, The New Saints, but always sort of had my own coaching (in mind) from very early on.”
Ramsay, who thought of coaching at age 15, attended Loughborough University, where he continued to play and earn a degree in sports science and sports management. He became the first-team head coach at Loughborough in 2012 and then went to coach in the academy system at Swansea City from 2013-16, when that Welsh team was in the English Premier League.
“Suddenly, you’re completely immersed in a professional coaching world and you’re really racking up hour after hour after hour on the grass,” Ramsay said. “(It) set me up really, really well. I was lucky.”
Ramsay said immediately turning to coaching as an adult gave him a 12-year head start on coaches who play first.
“There are certain things that you lack in, maybe the dressing-room feel, the weight of a top playing career,” Ramsay acknowledged. “But you certainly gained from the perspective of thousands of hours on the grass, organizing sessions, communicating with players, presenting in front of players.
“Ultimately, that is the job,” he continued. “It is communication, persuasion, being able to articulate your vision.”
Ramsay said his top coaching role models are men who, like him, did not have extensive playing careers.
“Obviously (Jose) Muorhino is probably a bit of a hallmark example for everyone I would say at that point, but then slightly more close to home:” Brendan Rodgers, Andre Villas-Boas and Graham Potter.
As Ramsay worked at Shrewsbury Town, Chelsea’s Under-23 team and Wales’ national team, he also kept up studious side hustles. Ramsay spent years on a PhD in psychology, but his day job and growing family created more important demands and he’s had to shelf it for now. He earned multiple coaching badges and mentored others.
“I always felt like, almost selfishly, it was a very good environment for me to develop my coaching skills,” Ramsay said. “Because you stood in front of often, in my case, delivering on the (UEFA) Pro license or the ‘A’ license in the U.K. to Champions League winners, World Cup winners, and you’re a young coach, articulating in your coaching beliefs as a model being put up in front of them.”
Ramsay said new coaches can have “loads of charisma as players, not lose it completely, but suddenly, when they’re in that coaching context, I think they realized very quickly that it’s — the two things are entirely different. And I think there was maybe a point when I was coming through earlier in my career where there was that bit more questioning as to whether you can be a top coach without having been a top player. I think now it’s unequivocally accepted.”
Ramsay met Dennis Lawrence in 2021 when they were mentoring for UEFA, and through the Welsh football association.
“It’s something that’s just cool between us,” Lawrence said. “We just found similarities in the way that we thought about the game. We enjoy working with each other.”
Lawrence has since joined MNUFC as Ramsay’s top assistant. At 49, he brings a wealth of experience as a player and coach of the Trinidad and Tobago national team and an assistant with Everton, Wigan Athletic and Coventry City.
“We both aligned with (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 the aspirations we set for ourselves. He’s a very, very hardworking young coach. I felt it was very good that I can accompany him in this journey.”
Cameron Knowles served as Loons’ interim head coach for the opening three games of the season as Ramsay finished up his nearly three-year stint as an assistant at Manchester United. Knowles and Ramsay talked often on the phone, and Knowles could tell then Ramsay was itching to get to work.
The first week of training sessions could have been overwhelming, Knowles recalled. “I think he just did a really good job of being really content rich with the sessions, with the meetings, really efficient with time but packing, really, a lot into into those moments.”
In the last two games, Ramsay has changed the shape of the team — from a four- to a five-man back line and from one to two strikers. He’s been willing to make halftime substitutions, even if that means scrapping the plan that started the match.
“As a coach to make changes, you sit there, and certainly I got to experience it for those few games,” Knowles said. “You make a change, something’s going to happen, right? It’s either going to be good, or it’s going to bad and you have to wrestle with that. If you leave it, you get the ability to just sort of say, ‘I didn’t mess around with it,’ you know?
“So I think it takes a certain bravery to make changes, especially early ones,” said Knowles, who remains on Ramsay’s staff.
Minnesota United coach Eric Ramsay points to players in the second half of a MLS game at Allianz Field in St. Paul on Saturday, April 27, 2024. Minnesota United beat Sporting Kansas City, 2-1. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
Ramsay doesn’t see it as courageous.
“I think it’s part the job,” he replied. “The players have to look at you and the staff as a group of people that can make sort of tangible decisions, that they can really cling on to, that are really going to help them win games. I think that is often far more helpful than very generic feedback around mentality, fight, attitude, passion, blah, blah, blah. I don’t think our group is lacking in that sense.”
While Mourinho became known as “The Special One,” Knowles doesn’t see a pretentiousness in his new boss.
“He’s really comfortable with what he doesn’t know,” Knowles said. “You come into a new league, you come into a new culture, new environment, new club, and it’s not, ‘Hey, I’ve got all the answers.’”
And supporters shouldn’t expect Ramsay’s post-game comments to go viral like his predecessor.
“I’m sure there will be moments where people are crying out for a little bit more volatility and a little bit more emotion, passion,” Ramsay said about his demeanor. “But I think largely over the course of a couple of years — or a career, certainly then — that is a mentality that will stand me in good stead in the groups I work with, and in good stead, particularly in the MLS, where things change so quickly.”
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