New American club for ex-Claret Heath
Burnley play Stoke today and earlier this week Adrian Heath, who started his playing career with the Potteries club and ended it at Turf Moor, was appointed as the new head coach of Minnesota United who are moving into Major League Soccer (MLS) in 2017.
Although he started his career with home town club Stoke it was his six years at Everton, from 1982 to 1988, for which he’ll best be remembered as a player, at a time when they went on to challenge local rivals Liverpool at the top of English football.
It was after a second spell with Stoke that he arrived at Burnley in 1992 after we’d just escaped the fourth division and he was a major player in our two seasons which led to a promotion via a Wembley win against Stockport in 1994.
He left to become assistant manager at Sheffield United, working for Howard Kendall, but returned just a few weeks later as manager of Burnley during which time he played his final games in league football at the age of 35. In doing so he became the club’s first ever player/manager and in total he played 148 games for us, scoring 35 goals.
Again he left Burnley to join Kendall, this time at Everton, but he also had a short spell as manager at Sheffield United as well as working as assistant to Peter Reid at Sunderland, Leeds and Coventry where he was twice caretaker boss.
He moved to America in 2008 to become head coach at Austin Aztex, Stoke’s sister club. That club moved to Florida to become Orlando City and at those clubs he won two USL Pro championships and three Commissioner’s Cups. After a successful move into the MLS he was fired at Orlando earlier this year after a difficult run of results.
However, he’ll return to the MLS in 2017 with Minnesota and he said this week: “I had an opportunity to go back to England to work, but I wanted to stay and prove myself in this country. I’m really proud of the opportunity I had and what we did in Orlando, and I’m really looking forward to this new challenge.”
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