Editor’s note: You should also check out our weeklong series of player profiles for Minnesota United FC, which includes Kevin Venegas, Sammy Ndjock, Justin Davis, Ben Speas and Christian Ramirez.

New Minnesota United FC coach Carl Craig, a former vegan punk rocker from England, was asked how he hypnotizes his players.

“Do you know what a transderivational search is?” Craig responded in a soft voice and thick Geordie accent. “Have you ever heard of that term? Just imagine what trans-deri-vational …”

Craig was being interviewed by the Pioneer Press at a Minneapolis restaurant this week. Thinking of his question to my question, I gazed out the window. He sipped his stout beer; I searched for root words.

Transderiva—

“Aye! That’s right,” Craig interrupted as he saw me exploring deep recesses of my brain. “And then I’m jumping in.”

That unleashed Craig’s jovial laugh about seeing a window into my unconscious mind. He left me to later figure out that “transderivational search” is the process of recalling memories for previous relatable experiences. Related Articles Minnesota United acquires striker Kei Kamara in trade with Colorado

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Craig is not your typical X’s and O’s coach. Under his trendy undercut pompadour haircut lies a brain with vast experiences and desires to empower his players by understanding their feelings and motivations.

Craig has been employing some of these hypnotic, psychological and meditational tactics since before he became an assistant coach for Minnesota’s professional soccer team in 2010.

In December, Craig was promoted to head coach, and on Saturday his team began what is expected to be the club’s last season in the second-tier North American Soccer League.

After a nomadic coaching life, Craig now has a two-year contract through the 2017 season, which is expected to be the Loons’ debut campaign in Major League Soccer.

“I’m told that if enough things go well, there is no reason why I shouldn’t be (the team’s coach in MLS),” Craig said.

To solidify job security, Craig will do things his unorthodox way.

Craig’s friend Manny Lagos stepped aside as United coach this offseason to run the front office as sporting director. He said Craig has constantly been searching for ways to improve his craft.

“I think that if you are genuine, the players know that,” Lagos said. “Carl is genuine with his wanting to help players attack the game not only from a physical standpoint and a tactical standpoint but from a mental standpoint.”

ORIGINS



Craig, now 50, grew up “football mad,” playing in the Newcastle and Sunderland youth academies near his hometown in northeast England.

When he was young, his parents divorced and his father passed away. He lived with his mother, but she couldn’t provide rides to practices while she worked night shifts as a nurse.

“It was basically me and my sister looking after ourselves,” Craig said. “Not a lot of growing up happened. Nothing stupid. Never got in trouble, but maybe the decisions were not the best things.”

His mother remarried and moved to the Middle East when he was a young teen. His older sister got pregnant and moved out.

“I fell out of football for a little bit,” he said.

With earnings from morning and evening newspaper delivery routes, he purchased a guitar and joined punk rock bands called The Abductors and Reality Control.

“A great education, to be honest with you,” Craig said. “We used to play all over the country. It was sort of politically motivated.

“I’m an anarchist — not in the sense where you smash the world and blow everything up,” Craig explained. When “anarchist” originated in England, “it wasn’t anti-goverment or anti-state, it was not in support of the (British royalty). I still have left-wing politics, it’s more about self-sufficiency and taking care of yourself.”

Through punk rock, Craig became good friends with members of the band Chumbawamba, a group which later became an international success with the hit song “Tubthumping,” and its lyrics, “I get knocked down, but I get up again.”

Chumbawamba and Craig’s bands would host fundraising shows for the coal miners’ strike in the early 1980s as well as animal liberation efforts and other like-minded liberal causes.

“When you’re young, you’re exploring and seeing a different style of life,” he said.

Craig then ran a whole foods co-operative with bandmates out of their apartment in Newcastle.

“There would be a knock on the door, ‘come in,’ have a money tin, you know, 25 pence or whatever it cost, whatever it was, dry goods, take special orders as well, you would fill in what you bought in the book, sign the book, put the money in the tin,” Craig said, pausing for a short breath. “We did that for a couple years.”

Craig also tried to open a vegan restaurant. “I was really into it because I love cooking,” he said. “I hitchhiked all over Britain, going to vegan restaurants, vegetarian restaurants, to figure out how they did it.”

But Craig couldn’t raise the money to open the niche restaurant. “It was the mid-’80s; it wasn’t trendy like it is these days,” he reasoned.

Craig also put together a left-leaning newsletter. “What was going on with Barclays bank, screwin’ everyone, that kind of stuff,” Craig said.

Then he came back to “football” as the coach of a co-op/music club that had a team similar to the set-up of bars and rec-league softball in the U.S.

He then obtained licensing from England’s Football Association. “I had played a bit and was mad keen on gettin’ in again,” Craig said.

Meanwhile, he loved his part-time gig as bicycle messenger and took any coaching job that came his way.

“I was asked by the (government) officer if I would be comfortable coaching people that had been charged with sexual offenses,” Craig said.

And?

“I mean, football is football, and it gets them out of the (expletive),” Craig said. “I’ve made it work. It’s me passion, so I went where I’m needed to go.”

COACHING NOMAD



Craig moved to Minnesota in 1994 when he took a position with Coerver Coaching. From there, he criss-crossed the state for any coaching opportunity.

“Eden Prairie when I first came over. Minneapolis United. Edina. There was a club called Wings. Minneapolis Westside, Rosemount, which became Dakota Rev. I did stuff for Apple Valley. I’ve been up north. I’ve been here, there. State ODP, region. I’ve had a PDL team here; I was the head coach there. We had NPSL team, a while back. I was the head coach there. Um.”

He also helped with a Somali club in Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, the Hmong community in North Minneapolis, Hopkins High School special education. He then headed the 2009 U-16 boys team at Shattuck-St. Mary’s School, a prep and boarding school in Faribault, Minn.

“His personality and demeanor on the field was captivating for the boys,” said Tim Carter, director of boys soccer at Shattuck-St. Mary’s.

MENTAL IMAGING



Before his season at Shattuck, Craig said he went to the liquor store and bought bottles of champagne to then celebrate the championship he knew the team would win.

“They (the kids) were never going to drink it because they were underage, but for me it’s the symbolism,” he said.

Craig has used a similar strategy with United this preseason.

“I asked every individual: If he was going to have a drink and celebrate, what would it be?” Craig said. “There were a lot of Johnnie Walker Blue (Label Whisky) and all this stuff. … Daniel Mendes wanted to drink Coke Zero. It’s not about alcohol, but it’s about celebrating.”

Director of team operations Angie Blaker has each player’s request written down and filed away. Craig expects to reference that list when the preparations for a championship are being made in November.

Craig will have a Bacardi and Coke. “I don’t need fancy,” he said.

HYPNOTISM



United defender Justin Davis was Craig’s “test dummy” for hypnosis efforts on road trips in 2011. Craig would go through different things he had learned in seminars and sometimes Davis would fall asleep for the entire flight.

“He kept asking a lot of questions,” Davis said. “If you keep asking questions, you get to the answer of what you are looking for. For him, it’s a lot of why do we do certain things and why do we perceive things a certain way.”

Davis said the mental imaging Craig instills has helped him process his actions. “Maybe it’s seeing yourself hoist a trophy at the end of the year,” he said.

Licensed psychologist Justin Anderson, of Premier Sports Psychology in Edina, has worked with teams in the NBA, NHL and the University of Minnesota’s athletic department. He has witnessed a growth of teams looking to psychology for an advantage.

“Hypnosis has a little inconclusive data on it,” Anderson said. “Partly, it’s hard to measure. … I think the person doing the hypnosis is a big factor on it and then certain athletes are more prone or able to do it.

“Ultimately, what hypnosis really is is a form of is relaxation combined with some visualization. We do know based on studies after studies that being able to relax and see the game can be tremendous.”

United defender Kevin Venegas credits Craig’s knowledge of soccer strategy and formations but doesn’t get into “the whole weird stuff like hypnotizing. They say some people might not get hypnotized because they are not subjective enough to it, and I believe that I am that,” Venegas said.

Craig countered, “I just haven’t gotten close to him yet.”

HEAD SCARE



In 2012, the then-Minnesota Stars were preparing to play the Tampa Bay Rowdies in the NASL championship game. On the way to a training session, Craig felt dehydrated and light-headed as he was driving a minivan.

Craig, a husband and father, was hospitalized overnight and diagnosed with hydrocephalus, which is an accumulation of excess fluid in the brain.

“I was gone,” Craig said. “I felt like I was going to die.”

“It was one of the scariest moments for a lot of us,” Lagos said. “We tried to shelter the players as much as possible from what was going on.”

But Craig was not about to miss the title game, which ended in a loss determined by a penalty-kick shootout.

“We kind of joke that we broke him out” of the hospital, Lagos said. “He will tell you to this day, he was very weak for months afterward.”

Craig said the health scare reinforced his belief that there’s always an alternative. “The way out is how you think, which is available to all of us,” he said.

For Craig, his purpose in life is “bigger than chasing a bloody ball around. … It’s the people, being able to share the experience with them and hopefully steering them on a faster track to where they want to go to. I think the football is a vehicle for me to work with people.”