The Minnesota United coach was at Old Trafford under Solskjær, Rangnick and Ten Hag – now he is branching out on his own in MLS
“I felt like my personality was well suited to it,” Eric Ramsay says, explaining why he jumped into coaching as a teenager. There is drive and inquisitiveness to the Welshman, who was on the backroom staff at Manchester United before moving to the USA to become Minnesota United’s manager last March. Before the real stuff begins, Ramsay wants to know about life at the Guardian. Is this the interviewee putting the interviewer at ease? Or evidence of someone who knows how to connect with strangers?
Ramsay has the leadership gene. He grew up in a small market town in rural Wales and was a busy type, captaining the county team and putting on coaching sessions for local children. “At 14 or 15 I could get a feel for what my coaching voice was,” he says. What was he like? “More self-conscious. You trip, you stumble. But I felt like I was making enough of a mark with kids for it to grab me. From 16 or 17 almost everything I did was geared towards that pathway.”
