The Loons manager sat down with GOAL to reflect on his previous experiences, and his new challenge in MLS
Minnesota United's Eric Ramsay is the youngest MLS manager in league history, joining the league at just 32 years old. Despite it being his first lead manager role, he's already had a sizable impact as currently sit seventh in the Western Conference after missing the playoffs last season.
Ramsay was appointed prior to the start of the 2024 season as just the second-ever permanent head coach of Minnesota, taking over from Everton legend Adrian Heath who was fired towards the end of the 2023 MLS campaign.
However, Ramsay isn't an average first-year coach. He's worked and trained with several managers at the highest level.
Prior to joining Minnesota, he held coaching stints with both Chelsea FC and Manchester United of the English Premier League – two of the world's largest clubs. With , he worked with their U23 squad, hand-in-hand with Frank Lampard, and while he was an assistant with , he worked with all three of Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Ralf Rangnick, and most recently, Erik Ten Hag.
During his undergraduate studies, he even had a brief overlap with Ipswich Town manager Kieran McKenna, whom he reunited with at Manchester United years later.
Now, in his head coaching debut, he's led through a testing campaign, seeing them into the postseason after they narrowly missed out in 2023.
Ramsay sat down with GOAL to discuss all this and more in the latest Wednesday Convo.
Life in Minnesota
How are you and your family settling into life in the USA, and Minnesota in particular?
Eric Ramsay: “Well, we've really enjoyed life in the States. My wife and I, we've got two young children…I think we've settled far better than we could possibly have imagined. Really, I think that they're really happy with the rhythm of life, and we've embraced every part of Minnesota and life via the wider sports setting…And my wife's really sort of jumped in two feet to life with the club as well. So we thought we've got a really nice balance in that sense. And and then the year with the team, which I'm sure we'll go into more detail, has been almost what I would have hoped it to be in in my first year as a head coach, a really rich experience, and one that ultimately is has led to us achieving our objectives and hopefully going beyond.”
AdvertisementGetty Images SportFirst year with Minnesota United
What’s your first year as a head coach been like with Minnesota United?
“It's been tough…We've had a genuine sense of three… three seasons [this campaign] where things started really, really well, and we were winning our game in hand in way of going top of the table, and then we entered what was, for a load of reasons, a really turbulent period from June onwards, where we suffered through loss of players to the Copa America and various other international commitments.
We lost a couple of key players through the European window, and this window not aligning, and we find ourselves really short of players for what seemed a really long time and we suffered, we suffered for that. But fortunately, now we are in this, what I've termed as sort of the third iteration, third part of this season, we seem to be back on track.
And I think from my perspective as a head coach, it's been almost a perfect blend of experiences, I would say, in the sense of, I've had a chance to experience some real highs, also experience a sort of prolonged period of difficulty and test myself in that situation, and then I've had the chance to try and get a team back on track and rebuild with some new faces. So I've taken an incredible amount from that on my coaching journey, and I'm sure it'll be a period that will stand me in really good stead going forward."
USA Today ImagesThoughts on MLS Playoffs
MNUFC clinched a spot in the postseason. What are your thoughts on the MLS playoff format, as European football has nothing like it?
"I can say only from the position that I'm in there, that I really enjoy the format. I think it's kept everything alive right until final day for for a lot of teams, and obviously, from our perspective, has been really interesting, because we, first and foremost, we looked like we were competing for the top four, and then as we fell away, perhaps it was eight and nine, and perhaps now we're, we're anywhere between five, six and eight as we eight as we finish. So I think we've really benefited from the format, and obviously now we've still got the most exciting part of the year to come, and hopefully that's how fans feel about it as well. So it's something I've embraced and tried to not sort of lean into the skepticism that people back home do [in England].
And in terms of our preparation for it, I think we, we had no right to expect it, but we set ourselves to challenge of being the best team in the West in the final 10 games, the 10 games and sort of represents this new group of hours post Leagues Cup, and we're on track for that. I think that's the best position we could possibly be in, that we're approaching the playoffs as one of, if not the in-form team [in the league], and we've got some real momentum and a real sense of purpose and rhythm. I think that's what we can do, and we'll see where the games are going to take us. And obviously I'm aware that, yeah, you can control some of that, but obviously it's effectively a Cup competition, and I know full well anything can happen in those."
AFPMinnesota's unique home tradition
Thoughts on Minnesota’s “British tradition” of singing Oasis’s Wonderwall after every home victory?
“Yeah, I am definitely an Oasis fan, for sure. I think it's difficult to be from Britain and not be [laughs]. Yeah, it's been incredible. I think it's one of the, as far as I've seen, been a part of it's one of the most unique, special ways to win a game at home that I've seen. Really iconic song.
We've had some really iconic moments, but probably not as many as we would have liked…But we've got to make sure we have more of those moments at the end, because they genuinely are special. And I think if, if the last game's anything to go by against Colorado, then we've, we've hopefully laid down a bit of a marker as to how we want to look at home and how we want things to feel at home. And fingers crossed, that's a difference maker for us between now and the end of the season.”
