Ian Cameron Explains It All (or whatever we could cover in 10 minutes)

Ian Cameron (center) celebrates after winning the 2022 USL League One
title with members of Tormenta FC

Ian Cameron spent nearly seven years with Tormenta FC, starting as the Head Coach for Tormenta 2 in 2018 before taking the reigns of the League One side in 2020. He compiled a 58-77-33 record and led Tormenta to the 2022 USL League One title. He resigned in August 2025 and joined the Charleston Battery of the USL Championship prior to the start of the 2026 season. 

I was able to catch up with Cameron following Charleston’s 2-0 victory over Detroit City FC on Saturday. That win moved Charleston to fifth in the Eastern Conference and just two points out of second place. We touched on a number of topics and what follows is a lightly edited transcript of his answers.

On what he did following his resignation:

“Once you get to professional sports, (with) anybody who has been a head coach, there’s only two parts of your life that remains, right? It’s your professional, and your family. The social side goes completely. You accept that wholeheartedly, right? You give that up readily, but eve though only two parts of your life are still there, one of them is still going to go a little bit, and when we’re young and dumb coaches, sometimes the family just goes here. 

So when you get a chance to steal back a few months. I’ve got two young kids, we’ve got a third on the way, another girl. All is going well with the process. So to have a chance to have those moments and invest in them a little bit more, it’s welcoming, you know? That’s not what the purpose of it was for, but that’s the silver lining. And it’s a hell of a silver lining, right?”

When I spoke with Cameron last August, he was preparing to coach his daughter’s soccer practice. I asked about time with his family and what he did between his resignation and joining Charleston:

“It was great. Just being with her more and them not living a breathing weekends and being around dad’s team and so forth. Look, that’s the career we chose. The kids love it. My wife loves it. We want to be in soccer the rest of our lives, but when that little window opens, you don’t plan it that way , but you take advantage of it and we took advantage of it.

(The time off) got me a chance to come and watch Charleston train. I went to MLS clubs train. When you’re in the thick of it, you don’t have much time for professional development so it’s like ‘ok, here I get to put a little bit more investment in my family and spent a bit more fun time with the kids and do a little bit of professional development and that really helped.”

Cameron patrolling the sidelines during the May 30th matchup
between Charleston and Detroit City.

Following Cameron’s resignation, Mark McKeever was named interim Head Coach before being named the permanent Head Coach during the final stretch that saw Tormenta go 9–1-2 en route to a playoff appearance. I asked Cameron what it was like watching his former team have such success:

“Brilliant. Brilliant. Mark (McKeever)’s a top, top operator. You live and breath it for the boys. It’s almost easier being on the sideline than it is watching it on video. I didn’t want to come to the games because they didn’t need that distraction of me looming over like the Ghost of Christmas Past, right? Mark and Jordan are both very good operators. 

I thought the boys did tremendous. I thought Niall (Reid-Stephen) was outstanding. The guys like (Conor) Doyle and (Aaron) Walker and all these guys led the group down the stretch and it was really cool. And to be honest, they were unfortunate not to go through against Spokane who are a hell of a side. So it was cool to see it.”

I asked Cameron about his process for figuring out what to do after leaving Tormenta and what he was looking for in his next position:

“It was ‘take a step back and then just kind of map out what the next phase was going to look like.’ I knew I wanted something new. I think that last year, no matter what was happening with (Tormenta) would have probably been my last. If Pro-Rel had kicked in a little bit faster than maybe you visualize that with the club and that would have been a dream to take Tormenta up through Pro-Rel. But that timeline wasn’t going to match and I know that this was probably the juncture.

It may have happened a year or two earlier, but when you start to love an ownership group and when you start to love a community, it's not easy to step away, right? It’s not easy to move to something new. But I’m a young coach, I mean, I’ve only just turned 38. So what I knew at that juncture was that I’ve been a head coach by myself for about 10 years between college and pro. I wanted to step into another environment where either I was an assistant to a head coach that I had a lot in common with, but I could learn something from and a GM to work under a bigger economy of scale in an MLS-type organization and to just see what that infrastructure looks like. 

I wanted to expose myself to one of the two and I had a couple of opportunities on either front, but (Charleston Head Coach) Ben (Pirmann) and I have always had a kind of similar game model. He’s a team I’ve played against quite a lot. I thought I could add a little value in where and I knew this organization could add value to the toolkit I have at my disposal as a coach.”

On Charleston’s style of play:

“They do what we tried to do at Tormenta on steroids, right? They press super aggressively. We’re all very front foot. We press forward all the time and we move the ball through the midfield really, really well. You remember at Tormenta, sometimes we had high possession, but not enough penetration. What we do at home well, here, is we have those same kind of possession stats, but we’re able to turn it into more chances and not is going to be fun to kind of unlock that and learn from that. It’s been a really enjoyable process so far.

My wife, my kids are happy and at this junction in my career, I think it’s been the right step so far and it’s been one I’m really enjoying.”

On the difference between being the head coach and an assistant:

“Shut the fuck up, right? (he said this with a laugh). It’s about knowing your place a little bit and having more soft power as opposed to, you know, the authority. But again, I think this is a juncture I probably needed. There’s more benefits to it. The game day rhythm’s different and being more of an inbetween guy, being a vehicle between the players and the head coach, which is nice. It allows me to probably get a little bit closer to the guys now because I’m not the judge and the executioner. I’m kind of a vehicle between Ben’s ideas and the players and I think it’s a nice place to be.

It keeps my heart rate down on game days. It’s still pretty high, but not as high as when I was ranting and raving at Tormenta. Seeing the game from just a different perspective, I think, it’s always helpful.

What Cameron has learned in his time as an assistant coach to prepare him for if or when he seeks another head coaching position:

I’d be really surprised if, at some juncture, I don’t (become a head coach again). I’m not itching to get out right now. I like where I’m at. 

But (I’ve learned) a lot. I think just watching and visualizing Ben. Would that be yourself? What decisions we make. The foresight he has is really, really good. What Ben and (Club President) Lee (Cohen) do a really good job of is they have some core principles and really hit home on it and revisit those principles week in and week out as an organization and as a team on the field. 

I think they’re kind of narrower focus. Sometimes I was guilty of being scattered in terms of trying lots of different things. I think their structure is a simpler one and one I really enjoy. Being a part of that, I think, has simplified some of the game and has certainly added to my toolkit. If I don’t come here and add to my head coaching toolkit then I’m the fool, right? I think it will be a great experience. It has been so far.”

Cameron on being with a USL Championship side and differing expectations and different locations:

“When (Tormenta) played the Open Cup, we had the exposure of playing Inter Miami. We played Charlotte FC and so forth, but now knowing that you’re going into Louisville with the expectation to win a game. You’re going to Rhode Island with an expectation to win a game or go down to Tampa as a direct competitor as opposed to being an underdog. That’s a nice challenge. I wanted the challenge of being part of an organization that had a clear expectation and they had the economy of scale to expect to win. That’s a nice pressure. It’s one I like and one I thrive under.

The Van Tassells always put that on us at Tormenta and it was fair and we, obviously, were successful in one particular year, but there’s not really many excuses here for the players or anybody. So then the coaching kind of becomes a little simpler on that front. It’s less of a siege mentality.

To your question about going to different cities. Yeah. New airports. New rhythms. It’s good. I mean, eventually that will get old as well, right, at some point in a few years time, that won’t be enough and it’ll be on to MSL or Europe or something like that. But for now, it’s really cool.”

Grading Charleston’s performance and evaluating where they are as a squad about a third of the way through the season:

“Right now as a team we’re probably a B or B-. I think with the amount of turnover we’ve had as a squad… I think if you look at kind of the intellectual capital on the field and the point production, as well as the experience of the likes of Leland Archer, the team’s lost a lot. So at this juncture, about a third of the way through the season, this is probably where the group should be if we’ve done our job. I think we still left a couple out on the road. That’s something we need to fix, but thankfully at home we’re a pretty dominant team. (Note: Charleston is 3-0-1 at home but are 1-4-0 on the road following Saturday’s home win.)

We’re 2-0 in the (USL) Cup, so we’ve got a game next week which gives us the opportunity, potentially, that if we do a really good job against Pittsburgh then we’ll be playing a (group stage) final against Charlotte and that will be the first final of hopefully five matches. Four matches to go if we win that, then a quarter and in to the semi and get to the final. You know, we’re trying to keep ourselves in all competitions possible. We can get to the back end of the season and we can be involved in two or three finals, that’s brilliant.”

Cameron during his time at Tormetna FC

Finally, I asked him about his reaction to Tormenta going on hiatus in late Feburary and his thoughts on that entire situation.

“I’ve been, along with the Van Tassells, I’ve been the steward of that organization from a technical side for quite a few years. Darin and I, and Netra, have been really, really tight through the whole time. What I can say with certainty is what they try to do for the community, how much they leveraged, how much of their own time commitment, wealth, resources they put into trying to give the community something really special is incredibly admirable. Obviously there’s never a good time to go on a hiatus or to fold. I think they still have the framework to potentially rise again and really, nobody wants that more than myself and hopefully the funding comes through to enable that.

I think everybody should just take stock of, these are people that have put their life and soul into trying to give coaches, front office and players opportunities across America. We’ve got somebody working high up in Orlando City. Somebody working high up in Seattle Sounders, somebody as an integral part of the academies at Charlotte FC and Columbus Crew. You’ve got coaches in USL Championship now, all because of the opportunity that was presented to them. And that’s not even mentioning all the players applying their trade in the league because of the opportunity afforded to them by the Van Tassells and the organization of Tormenta FC. So I think everybody owes them a massive gratitude. Unless funding comes in or national TV deals and so forth to float these owners, it’s incredibly hard to keep alive. What they did through Covid, the risks they took and the amount they leveraged themselves, it’s, it’s incredible. 

I hope someday there’s a story. If they rise again, that’ll be the story. If it doesn’t quite work out with the financing and the economics don’t make sense, I hope they make a story about it. I hope somebody like yourself is able to make some kind of documentary of what those people gave our community and the belief they gave them that the smallest market in professional sports could win a championship on the men’s and women’s side. That’s a legacy. Incredible.”