For a dead man walking, Adrian Heath was in a good mood on Oct. 5, 2023.

The night before, Minnesota United had suffered one of the most lopsided defeats in club history, 5-1, at Los Angeles FC. At the time, that score line was only outdone by the 6-1 drubbing the Loons suffered to Atlanta United in the club’s first-ever MLS home game — the snowy opener that became an avalanche in March 2017.

That LAFC defeat deepened the Loons’ winless skid to seven straight; MNUFC had fallen to 12th place in the Western Conference; and odds of making MLS Cup Playoffs were daunting with two games remaining.

Despite the dour circumstances, Heath told the Pioneer Press last month, he “didn’t see it coming.” But soon after the Loons’ plane touched down in the Twin Cities the following day, MNUFC’s principal owner Bill McGuire told Heath, who had become a close friend, he was out after nearly seven full seasons in charge.

Heath felt the rug had been pulled out prematurely.

“What we’d done should have warranted the last two games,” Heath said. “… I thought I should have been allowed to have seen the season out. Nothing has happened in the past year that changes me mind on that. I was really disappointed that I didn’t get the opportunity to see the season out and say a few goodbyes.

“I’ve been here a long time. You suddenly can’t go in the training ground (in Blaine). You’ve been there for seven years with some people and not be able to say, ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.’ ”

In the wake of the firing, Loons CEO Shari Ballard said, performances had been “plateauing a bit for the last couple of years” and “it continues to sort of go in the wrong direction.”

Under interim head coach Sean McAuley, the Loons’ run of four consecutive playoff appearances — then the longest active streak in MLS — came up three points short on the final day of the season.

Heath, whose contract with MNUFC expired at the end of 2024, sat down with the Pioneer Press in December to discuss his tenure in Minnesota.

Hard feelings?

Heath came to Minnesota after being fired as head coach of Orlando City in July 2016. For years in Minnesota, he didn’t hide his grudge over being let go from the Orlando project he helped foster from USL to MLS.

But fourteen months after his dismissal from MNUFC, Heath says he is no longer upset about it.

“I’ve moved on,” he said. “I’ve always said this, and this is not a slight on Minnesota, Orlando City will never just be another team for me. We built that from complete scratch. … This football club (in Minnesota) can go back and have a history from the ’70s, you know, to the Strikers and the Kicks.”

When McGuire dropped the hammer, it was hard to hear the reasons why at the time.

“You’re not in the frame of mind then to listen to the answers anyway, because other things are going through your head,” Heath said.

While Heath now says he feels closure, there are still some harder feelings harbored deeper in his core. Some working relationships either fell apart or fractured, while little things are still disheartening, like going out on the back of that LAFC drubbing.

Heath never seemed to be fully embraced by Loons’ supporters, but he wishes he at least could have met his end on better terms, maybe in front of the club’s fans one last time. He thanked them for creating great environments at Allianz Field and, before that, at TCF Bank Stadium.

Heath still resides in Minnesota and, at times, used “we” to describe the current state of United in an hour-long conversation.

Big picture

Heath finished with a 91-101-56 overall record in Minnesota in all competitions, but the Englishman had the Loons out-performing its salary spend with its place the league standings on a nearly annual basis. and he brought the club to the verge of two trophies — the 2019 U.S. Open Cup and, to a lesser degree, the 2020 MLS Cup.

He said his biggest achievement with MNUFC was “making us relevant.”

Specific moments in the Open Cup final and Western Conference final are still engrained in Heath’s brain.

“I look back with a great deal of pride in what we did,” he said. “I think that we competed really, really well when I look back. Yeah, there’s some things that you think, ‘We didn’t quite get that right.’ ”

Heath said it wasn’t his style to go asking ownership for more money, but he pushes back when expectations were to compete for trophies with deeper-pocketed clubs. “It doesn’t equate,” he said.

Heath has remained mostly outside the limelight over the past year. He joined the Apple TV studio show last spring and had classy things to say about his successor Eric Ramsay. But on a British podcast, Heath tore off a scab about how he felt the club was ill-prepared for its expansion season in 2017.

“They knew they were going to MLS at least a year in advance,” Heath repeated to the Pioneer Press about the build up before his hire in November 2016. “We should have been a lot further down the road (than having) only two players sign and really nobody identified.”

The Loons pieced together a roster during the 2017 season, and Heath still looks back at that 10-18-6 team as one of his best coaching jobs. They finished ahead of three other MLS sides.

“That group of players showed incredible resilience,” Heath said.

Inchy’s irony

Standing 5-foot-6, Heath held the affectionate nickname “Inchy” while he was a striker scoring goals in the top flight of English soccer, primarily with Everton in the 1980s.

But the most ironic thing about his MNUFC tenure was how Heath’s forwards were never able to consistently produce goals.

Christian Ramirez’s 14 goals in 2017 remains the club’s MLS record, but he was sold in 2018 to LAFC for up to $1 million, a sum Heath often repeated as needed to sign Ike Opara and Ozzie Alonso and bring the club to legitimacy in 2019.

Besides Ramirez, it was a long list of underwhelming forwards, including Angelo Rodriguez, Luis Amarilla, Adrien Hunou and Mender Garcia. There was also Abu Danladi, Mason Toye,  Romario Ibarra and Ramon Abila. The list goes on.

Heath was asked if there was anything he wishes he could have done differently with Minnesota. “We never got to center forward right,” he lamented.

Heath’s supposed calling card with strikers ended up becoming a cudgel for Loons supporters.

The Loons also never spent significant sums on a striker until they signed Teemu Pukki in the summer of 2023. He came on a free transfer from English club Norwich but has had a significant salary in excess of $3 million. “I thought he might be in the missing piece for us,” Heath said.

Pukki did score 10 total goals in 2023, but fellow Finn and playmaking midfielder Robin Lod had already been lost for the season with a knee injury. And central attacking midfielder Emanuel Reynoso had been AWOL in Argentina for the first half of the year.

“Had we had all the players available (in 2023), I think I would still be sitting here as the manager,” Heath said.

New Minnesota United striker Teemu Pukki, center, with manager Adrian Heath, left, and technical director Mark Watson during Pukki’s introductory news conference on Friday, July 7, 2023 at Allianz Field in St. Paul. (Andy Greder / Pioneer Press)

Understanding Reynoso

As one of the most dynamic players in MLS, Reynoso’s decisions to flake on the Loons at the start of the 2022 and ’23 seasons hurt not only the club but also Heath’s job status.

Reynoso, a two-time MLS All-Star, once told Heath he was “not good on his own” in Minnesota, and efforts to bring his parents up from Argentina were unsuccessful. His wife and daughter did join him in the U.S. in 2022.

Reynoso’s U.S. Green Card application had included his wife, but then they were no longer together. “It just got messy,” Heath said.

When Reynoso would head back to his hometown of Cordoba, Argentina, he would get mixed up with his old friends. When he didn’t report for work and violated a contract that paid him nearly $2 million a year, MLS suspended him without pay.

Searching for answers, Heath asked fellow Argentine and MNUFC winger Franco Fragapane for insight on Reynoso’s behavior. Fragapane’s message: “Rey doesn’t care about money,” Heath shared. “If Rey has to go back to (a meager) living like he was with his mates, that’s not a problem.”

Heath always welcomed Reynoso back, including midway through 2023, but when Reynso went MIA again at the start of 2024, new Chief Soccer Officer Khaled El-Ahmad transferred Reynoso to Club Tijuana in Mexico in May. Heath’s longer leash had run out with El-Ahmad.

“He’s certainly the best footballer that Minnesota has probably ever had,” Heath said. “I don’t care how far you’re going to go back in terms of sheer talent. It’s just sad that it ended the way that it did.”

Minnesota United manager Adrian Heath, left, celebrates with Emanuel Reynoso after Reynoso’s free-kick goal against Puebla in a Leagues Cup match at Allianz Field on July 23, 2023. Courtesy of Minnesota United

Another chance?

Heath has been interviewing in the U.S. and Europe for another coaching gig but has yet to land one. He remains old-school in his approach, but has been trying to incorporate new-age analytics when he sees fit.

“I’m not naive; I’m 63,” Heath said. “A lot of clubs are going a lot younger now.”

Ramsay, for instance, is 32. But Heath looks at other MLS coaches: San Jose’s Bruce Arena (73) and Seattle’s Brian Schmetzer (62).

“Nobody watches more football than me,” he said. “Nobody takes it serious more than I do, still traveling, going to watch teams train. That’s all money out my own pocket just to try and make sure I’m not missing out on anything. So, as long as I’ve got that enthusiasm. The one thing I have now is an awful lot of knowledge and an awful lot of experience.”