PORTLAND, Maine — The Portland Hearts of Pine’s new chief sporting strategist may be most known for bringing in a “Ted Lasso” star to his now-former club but his greatest strength is rebuilding struggling teams.
The Hearts announced on Monday that Ray Saari is joining the club as its new Sporting Director. Saari will take over the team management duties of coach Bobby Murphy, freeing up the club’s leading tactician to focus solely on the current players’ development.
Saari will be a welcome addition to a team that has struggled mightily in its sophomore year in USL League One. Portland sits in 14th place, nine points out of the playoffs with nine matches to play. The biggest cause of the slump has been injuries that crippled the offense and put an inordinate amount of pressure on the defense to play perfectly, which it has not.
Identifying talent and building player pipelines is exactly what Saari excelled at in his job as technical director with the El Paso Locomotive FC. El Paso finished last in 2024, the season before Saari’s arrival, and climbed to fourth by 2025. Now a year later, the Locomotive are in first place.
Saari has not been made available yet to the media but in a press release, he stated, “Creating a winning culture is about the standards you set every day. It’s about bringing in players and staff who are competitive, who hold themselves and each other accountable and who understand that success is built through the work you put in consistently.”
The news release stated: “Ray will lead the Hearts’ long-term sporting strategy, including roster construction, recruitment, player development and long-term club building, while Bobby will remain focused on sporting performance, including coaching, tactics, training and matchday execution.”
In the release, Murphy is quoted as saying that hiring Saari is the next evolution for the club while adding it “demonstrates our growth. He will be a great addition.”
A sporting director is similar to a general manager for an NFL or MLB team. The difference is how those teams are built as major U.S. sports teams are primarily constructed through a draft, while a sporting director can sign any players the team can afford. Additionally, a sporting director’s general duties include:
Player identification, scouting networks, and recruitment
Squad construction and wage/budget management
Establishing long-term player development pathways
Club-wide identity, processes, and structural standards
El Paso has its own youth development team, something Portland does not have as of yet. Saari focused on youth development and clearly has an eye for talent. Last year, he signed the youngest player in El Paso club history at the age of 15. The player, Kenneth Hoban, has already played in close to half of the Locomotive’s games and was even called up by the Mexican National U17 team.
Saari also has the benefit of being a professional soccer player himself. Over eight seasons, Saari played for several professional clubs, including five seasons with USL Championship teams. That gives him an understanding of the machinations of a pro soccer team that not all team executives have.
“Adding Ray as Sporting Director will allow us to be more deliberate in how we identify players, construct our roster, and support our coaching staff,” said club founder Gabe Hoffman-Johnson in the news release. “He brings experience across recruitment, player development, and roster planning, and adding his knowledge of the USL ecosystem and player pool will strengthen our entire sporting operation.”
Saari apparently also knows how to make a splash. In May, the Locomotive signed Cristo Fernandez, the 35-year-old actor who plays Dani Rojas, the fictional and overly jubilant soccer sensation in Apple TV+’s “Ted Lasso.” Fernandez has played more of a role of bringing attention to the club than he has on the pitch, where he has one appearance and 12 minutes of play.
Not to be outdone by Fernandez, Saari has also had his share of attention. Perhaps the most came when he was diagnosed with Stage 3B testicular cancer as a teenager. Saari wrote about the experience in a piece titled “Soccer Saved Me, Cancer Matured Me” and described the 10-month treatment. After remission, Saari attended a game at Sporting Kansas City where he was surprised with a visit to the owner’s box and met cancer-survivor and legendary cyclist Lance Armstrong.
If that story says anything about how Saari operates, Portland is in good hands. Before remission, he described how he snuck in some soccer play in between treatments.
“When my parents found out about it, my mom’s response wasn’t what I expected: How do you stop a determined child when you know that same determination is keeping him alive?” Saari wrote.
For his part, Saari expects to keep building what the Hearts have undertaken in a little more than a season and a half.
“There is already a strong foundation here,” Saari said in the news release. “My job is to help build on that by creating consistent processes around how we identify and evaluate players, how we construct the roster and ultimately how we put the coaching staff and players in the best possible position to succeed.”