L’homme de Montréal

For better or worse Hernán Losada gets the CF Montreal job

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of Montreal’s MLS team.

Say what you want about the Team Formally Known as the Impact, they do have drama in their DNA. Such as it was this past season when, despite being the thinking voter’s pick for MLS Coach of the Year, Wilfrid Nancy was forced out of the top job.

Why did it have to be that way? Like I said, drama. Team owner Joey Saputo got in a public fight with Nancy, it was widely whispered that things had gone sideways and, suddenly, Nancy is in Columbus.

The Crew were more than happy to get a guy that is widely respected and who lead Montreal to its highest ever position in 2022.

Most Montreal fans are accustomed to the rocky nature of the CF Impact’s history and, generally, accepting of it because of Saputo’s contribution to the sport in Montreal.

Aside: I get the only-we-can-criticise-our-crazy-owner instincts of Montreal fans. I’ve been a Cowboys fan for longer than most readers have been alive. I know all about intrusive ownership. But, there comes a point…

Accepting of the Nancy push or not, the hiring of former DC United manager Hernán Losada as Montreal’s next guy leaves most people…cold.

Anytime the words “former DC United” appear in front of an MLS hire in 2022 you are going to come up feeling a bit underwhelmed. Losada had a losing record for DC and developed a reputation for being a bit of a control freak.

The DC players didn’t exactly cry when he was let go.

Now, just because he didn’t really work at DC doesn’t mean that he won’t be successful in Montreal. He actually does seem more aligned with vice-president and chief sporting officer Olivier Renard’s vision of what Montreal can be in this league. He speaks French too, after living in Belgium for much of his career.

What is it that Renard wants Montreal to be? Sellers, basically. We’re seeing it now, with Johnston and Kone being shipped out for a boatload of allocation dollars. The way Montreal sees it, if they can bring useful guys in and then move them after a year or two, then that might be the shortcut that allows them to compete with the money spent at a LAFC or TFC.

In that system, where players are younger and not there for years and years, a hard-ass like Losada might have a longer shelf life.

Time will tell. It’s fair to be indifferent to this move today. It isn’t inspiring or interesting. It’s conservative.

What wouldn’t have been conservative would be to look down the Canadian pyramid and scoop up a guy that has a long track record of developing Canadian talent and who has managed to do so with a fraction of the budget of an MLS team.

I’m referring to three-time CanPL champion Bobby Smyrniotis.

Now, we don’t know if Smyrniotis was interested in the job, but for the sake of a conversation here let’s work with the assumption that he was. We’re also putting the language question aside because I’m not jumping into a century long debate about whether coaches in Montreal should have to speak French. No good will come from that.

People can learn how to speak French. Let’s assume Smyrniotis can or has.

So, was Smyrniotis qualified? How could he not be? He’s won three championships in four years. He took Forge to the CCL. Yes, it’s a lower level, but winning is winning. Too often, we get hung up on the level a coach is at rather than the job he or she is doing there. The core of coaching is the same at u12 as it is at Real Madrid. The only difference is managing the personalities.

Ok, then could Smyrniotis have managed the personalities of an MLS team? Would the players respect him?

This is one of those nebulous things that can’t really get proven one way or another until you see it play out. I’ll say this: Smyrniotis has managed teams that look like what Montreal wants to be, has no more questions here than Losada does, and who doesn’t respect that beard!

Ok, that last one isn’t serious, but lots of coaches have proven doubters wrong in this regard. John Herdman’s move to the CanMNT from the CanWNT comes to mind.

In some ways it isn’t fair to go down this road. Losada is the pick and, as I wrote above, it’s not out of the question that he will be successful. What is fair to talk about, however, is the idea of hiring from the CanPL.

There, the Canadian teams would be foolish to ignore the league. It benefits them to have an effective pathway and if you never look to promote from the rung below you then you take incentive away. You also are possibly missing out on a lot of knowledge of the Canadian player pool, which is vital for the three teams to take advantage of to the fullest.

We have seen success from bringing players like Joel Waterman, Mo Farsi and Lucas MacNaughton into MLS from CanPL. The next step is to start to look at coaches and administrators to finally make the Canadian pyramid whole.

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