It may go without saying, but due to the medium we’re working in here, we’ll say it anyway…the 2024 season has been anything but conventional for Minnesota United FC.
Hell, the season defied any sort of convention even before it began, as many assumed the club would have settled on a worthy successor to Adrian Heath, the club’s one and only head coach to have led the Loons for the entirety of its seven-year MLS history, long before camp opened. From the outside looking in, it may have even seemed like there was a lack of urgency by the club to install a new leader in the locker room, but those leading the search knew that was never the case.
To the credit of Loons’ managing partner Dr. Bill McGuire and team president Shari Ballard, patience was always the virtue during their search. They set out with a goal of finding the right people, rather than making conventional hires from a field of the usual suspects. Even in the face of outside scrutiny, they maintained a focus on finding a person that was best fit to usher in a new era in Minnesota. But, even before landing on their chosen hire for head coach, they found a person who shared their unique vision for the club’s future and held the belief that creating a culture of success goes beyond the first-team locker room.
To a casual fan, last November's hiring of Khaled El-Ahmad as the club’s Chief Soccer Officer and Sporting Director may have felt a bit out of left field. Even with his wealth of international experience across different facets of the game, including his time spent scouting for City Football Group from 2015-2021, El-Ahmad didn’t exactly fit the mold of others in similar positions across Major League Soccer. But, to her credit, Ballard was searching for somebody shake up the status quo in the Loons’ front office, and after having an opportunity to see the imprints he’s already made on the pitch, and at every level of the organization, it’s clear to see why the uncommon choice was, indeed, the right one for Minnesota United.
El-Ahmad and his expertise certainly made him a welcome contributor to the search for a head coach, but starting the preseason and regular season without a permanent hire on the sidelines is far from standard practice for any club at the professional level. Thankfully for all Loons fans, one of the right people they were searching for was already on board, and that’s former MNUFC2 head man Cameron Knowles. Even in the face of individual and organizational uncertainty, Knowles stepped in to lead the team in January and stepped up to the challenge of preparing them for the season ahead. Not only did he rise to the occasion in his interim role, but his ability to keep his team connected as a whole, communicate with his players, and keep this squad competing at a high level cannot be understated in its impressiveness. His unconventional wisdom was a guiding force in changing the club’s fortunes to start off this 2024 season, and his seat next to Coach Eric Ramsay was well earned.
Now, as the Loons continue to ride their late-season hot streak into their First Round playoff matchup with Real Salt Lake, it’s tough not to find a new appreciation for Head Coach Eric Ramsay and the job he’s done for this club in 2024. I know that I jokingly refer to the man as Chef Ramsay, which I’m sure he just “loves”, but kidding aside, I do feel he’s proven over the course of the season to be one of the most important ingredients in this club’s recipe for success in 2024. That might seem obvious considering he is the head man, after all, but it shouldn’t take away from all the ways he’s proven himself to be the right person for this job. His impressive background and coaching lineage was indeed a factor in the club’s pursuit of his services, but I’m not sure I’ve seen many step into their first official head coaching gig with the type of poise that Ramsay has shown.
Pressure on a first-time head coach is nothing new, but it’s far from conventional to have your first head coaching gig also qualify you as the youngest head coach in the history of America’s top professional soccer league. If that weren’t enough to chew on for the young man, starting that new job with the season already underway presented its own unique set of challenges. It was a true trial by fire for Ramsay, as he had to learn about each player’s strengths while simultaneously adapting those strengths into a strategy he believed would result in success on the pitch. Sounds like some challenging circumstances to contend with while trying to find results in your first season as the head man. Throw in a handful of non-schedule-friendly international breaks that summoned some of your most talented players away for weeks at a time, and you’ve truly got some seriously tough odds stacked against you.
In the case of Eric Ramsay, the key to his success has been getting his players to buy into the fact that they can compete with anyone in the league. It’s something you can see if you run down each of the final score lines from every fixture of the 2024 regular season. Even when this club was in the throes of their winless streak during June and July, the Black and Blue remained competitive. No matter who has been available to play, no matter how he’s had to tweak or alter a formation, Coach Ramsay has consistently gotten his club to believe they were getting closer and closer to finding their rhythm as a unit, even if that wasn’t being reflected on the scoreboard for that particular week.
When Ramsay and Khaled El-Ahmad finally did get their opportunity to collaborate on the missing pieces needed to bring their collective vision together during the summer transfer window, that’s exactly what they did. Together, they’ve added the likes of striker Kelvin Yeboah, midfielder Joaquín Pereyra, and defender Jefferson Díaz—all of whom have played a part in bringing stability on the pitch, and have proven themselves to be major contributors to the Loons’ late-season momentum.
To me, this late-season surge feels like the recipe for success that all parties had been working to create from the get-go, even if each had to work through their own unconventional circumstances to get here. And, at the risk of adding one more cooking analogy into the mix, there are plenty of good cooks out there, but sometimes it's about having the right cooks in the right kitchen at the right time to whip up something truly different from anything you’ve been served before. 🤌
