With the existing staff assessed, the next job has been filling some of the rather large gaps San Diego were carrying behind the scenes. There was no need for a mass clear-out because most of the people already here are perfectly capable, but the club was using only four of eight available coaching positions and had similar vacancies across recruitment, analysis and sports science. Given the money available, I saw little point in leaving those places empty. The first additions have therefore been about adding specialists around the staff I inherited, and the backgrounds of the people coming in fit rather nicely with the sort of club I am trying to build.
Eric Ramsay — Coach
Eric Ramsay has taken a fairly unusual route to this point because coaching was always much more of the plan than playing. Raised in Wales after being born in Shrewsbury, he played some senior football in the Welsh system and represented Wales in futsal, but studied sports science and sports psychology at Loughborough University with a coaching career already firmly in mind. He moved into Swansea City’s academy after university before joining Shrewsbury Town, where he progressed from academy work to Academy Manager and eventually had a short spell helping to take charge of the first team.
Chelsea then recruited him to work with their Under-23s, putting him around a particularly strong generation of young players including Marc Guéhi, Levi Colwill, Tino Livramento and Billy Gilmour. His reputation grew quickly enough that Manchester United brought him into Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s staff in 2021, initially with responsibility for set pieces and individual player development before his remit expanded into wider tactical coaching. He also worked with the Wales national team during that period and became notable for earning his UEFA Pro Licence at a remarkably young age.
His first senior managerial job came in MLS with Minnesota United in 2024, making the move particularly useful from my point of view because he already understands the peculiarities of this league. Minnesota reached the MLS Cup quarter-finals in both of his seasons before he returned to England with West Bromwich Albion in January 2026. In this save his career has taken a few more turns since then, but what interests me most is the combination of elite-level coaching experience, player development and actual MLS knowledge. His preference for possession football and back-three systems also makes him a fairly obvious fit for what we are trying to do here.
Willem Janssen — Coach
Willem Janssen comes from a very different background. He spent the best part of two decades as a professional player in the Netherlands, appearing more than 400 times in the Eredivisie and representing VVV-Venlo, Roda JC, FC Twente and, most significantly, FC Utrecht. He originally established himself as a midfielder before moving deeper later in his career and becoming a central defender, captain and one of Utrecht’s most experienced figures. By the time he retired in 2022 he had played more than 250 competitive matches for the club alone.
His first move after retirement was actually into management rather than coaching, becoming Technical Manager at VVV-Venlo. It only lasted a season before Janssen decided that what he really missed was the daily work with players, and Utrecht brought him back in 2023 as an individual development coach. The role involved working both with players in the senior squad and talent coming through Jong FC Utrecht, and he subsequently remained part of the club’s coaching structure. Utrecht extended his stay again in 2026, by which point he had become part of the first-team staff.
That background is probably why I like the appointment as much as I do. Janssen has lived the transition from attacking midfielder to defender, from captain to technical executive and then from executive to development coach. In-game he also arrives with a Model Citizen personality, Outstanding Working With Youngsters and a strong possession-coaching profile. With some of the younger players already in the senior squad and an academy where promotion has to be treated as a permanent decision, having somebody with that sort of development background around the first team should be useful.
Mário Jorge — Coach
Mário Jorge’s career has been almost entirely built around developing young players. He began coaching in futsal in Brazil in the late 1990s before moving into the eleven-a-side game with Audax Rio, working initially with younger age groups. After a spell in Vasco da Gama’s academy he joined Flamengo in 2016, beginning a long association with one of the most productive youth systems in Brazil.
He worked his way through Flamengo’s age groups from the Under-13s all the way to the Under-20s and coached a number of players across several years of their development. His teams were extremely successful as well. Flamengo’s Under-17 side won the Brazilian Championship, Copa do Brasil and Supercopa in 2021, while his later Under-20 teams collected major domestic honours and the Copa Libertadores at youth level. He was trusted enough to take temporary charge of Flamengo’s senior team on more than one occasion during 2023.
He subsequently moved into international youth football with Saudi Arabia’s Under-17s, taking them to an Asian Cup final and securing qualification for the age-group World Cup, before returning to Brazil with Internacional’s Under-20 side in 2025. In the real world he moved into senior management with Volta Redonda during 2026; our save has obviously taken him down a different route by the time he reaches San Diego. The common thread is the one I care about: he has spent years coaching talented young players, and his in-game profile backs that up with Outstanding motivation and youth development alongside very strong attacking coaching.
Steven Cherundolo — Coach
Steven Cherundolo brings considerably more MLS experience to the group. A United States international with 87 caps, he spent virtually his entire playing career in Germany with Hannover 96, making more than 400 appearances and eventually captaining the club. After retiring he stayed in coaching, working within Hannover’s youth and first-team structures before returning to the United States and eventually taking charge of LAFC.
His impact there was immediate. In his first season as head coach in 2022, LAFC won both the Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup, establishing Cherundolo as one of the league’s most successful young American coaches. His career has moved on again in this save, but the appeal here is fairly straightforward: he knows MLS, has worked in both American and German football, and has spent much of his career thinking about defending from the perspective of a full-back. With the rest of the new coaching group already giving us plenty on the attacking and possession side, Cherundolo looks like a particularly useful addition to strengthen the defensive work.
Luke Smith — Scout
The recruitment department has also been expanded, with Luke Smith arriving to add another pair of eyes to the scouting team. There is less public information available about Smith than the three coaches, but the part of his background that is documented is probably the most relevant one anyway: he spent around seven years working within Brentford’s analysis operation.
Public career records list Smith with Brentford and Brentford B from 2018 until 2025 as a video analyst, meaning his time there covered the end of Dean Smith’s reign and most of Thomas Frank’s transformation of the club. Football Manager’s historical databases have consistently listed him within Brentford’s recruitment-analysis department during the same period, so whatever the exact job title, his formative years in professional football were spent inside one of the more analytically minded recruitment and performance environments in England.
He has since moved from that analytical background into more traditional scouting, eventually becoming Chief Scout at Oldham before joining us in San Diego. His attributes make that progression particularly useful: Very Good Judging Player Ability and Potential, strong tactical knowledge and complete scouting knowledge of England, Argentina and Brazil. With Argentina already earmarked as an important market for our Designated Player recruitment and Brazil likely to be useful for U22 prospects, Smith gives the recruitment team another specialist whose career began with analysis rather than reputation and instinct alone.
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