Wednesday Convo: Minnesota United’s Eric Ramsay on learning from Manchester United’s Erik Ten Hag, Chelsea’s Frank Lampard, adapting to MLS

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.”

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  First 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.”

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  Thoughts 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.”

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  Minnesota’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.”
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  Life at Chelsea with Frank Lampard and Thomas Tuchel

  You worked with Chelsea’s U23 squad and as an assistant with the first-team. What was it like working with both Lampard and Tuchel?

  “Well, I started under Frank Lampard right when I first went there. And I think that that was, it was actually a really special time and a really influential period for the Academy, because it was the point at which Chelsea were banned from signing elsewhere, and they really had to draw on the academy. You had Frank there, a real Chelsea guy who had a couple of his staff that worked in the academy. So there was a really close link between the Under 23s and the first team that paid real dividends in some of the players that ended up coming through that particular period. Reece James, Mason Mount, and countless others that followed. But unfortunately that was cut short by, or certainly cut short in its fullest extent, by Covid, because it then sort of separated the two groups for the large majority of my time there.

  “But obviously I was then able to see the transition between Frank and Thomas (Tuchel) too, coming in. And of course, from my perspective, seeing as many top coaches operate and work, and getting a feel for their methodology and the messages they give to players has been, has been something that’s been something that’s been really beneficial for my career. So I was fortunate enough for Chelsea that I had a nice blend of seeing that side of things up close, but then also working with some of the top young players that, in really good numbers, have gone on to become Premier League players. It’s a period in my career that I really look back on fondly, and that’s something that was very formative.”

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  Working at Manchester United

  After Chelsea, you worked with Manchester United under Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Ralf Rangnick, and most recently, Erik Ten Hag. What is your biggest takeaway from your time at Man Utd, and of those three coaches, who would you say was the most influential in your career?

  “I would say first and foremost that it’s, I think unless you’ve been sort of inside that club, it’s difficult to appreciate the difficulty of being a manager there, being a player there, and even being a coach or a staff member there, the level of pressure and scrutiny and worldwide interest that makes it a really complex picture. And I was, I look back now having been a head coach for eight months, and I can appreciate the strength and conviction and communication skills of all of Ollie, Ralph and Erik. You don’t get to that level – No. 1 – without having real conviction in your own ideas. And then No. 2, you certainly don’t survive, therefore, for any length of time without being able to be a really strong communicator with your players, the organization and the media. And I think each of those in their own way, did that really well.

  And I think the longer I spent as a head coach, the more I can appreciate how well they each dealt with some of the real difficulties that you have there. I think the conversations that you have with yourself as a head coach are very, very different to those that you would have when you were an assistant, and obviously, having experienced a sticky patch with Minnesota this year, I can certainly now appreciate how that must have felt, or feels for Erik and Ollie and Ralf and now as as men, as people, you have to be incredibly strong. You have to know yourself really well and and you have to come in every day with a real energy in the face of a lot of adversity at a club like that, with that level of interest. So I think it’s mostly that I think about those three guys now that I’ve been head coach myself.”