CF Montreal fires head coach Courtois after poor start to season

MONTREAL - CF Montreal has fired head coach Laurent Courtois after its worst start to a Major League Soccer season since its inaugural campaign in 2012. 

The club announced the move Monday, two days after Montreal (0-4-1) lost 3-0 at Nashville SC. Assistant coach Marco Donadel will take over on an interim basis.

Courtois is the first MLS coach to be dismissed this season.

“It’s been four weeks that we’ve been evaluating this, it’s not just the results, but the performances," team president and chief executive officer Gabriel Gervais said. "We’re seeing a lack of cohesion and frustrated players.

"We felt this was the right time to do it in order to relaunch our season. I’s not easy to be coach, there’s a lot of turnover at that position but we feel that it’s the right decision."

Gervais said the discussion to potentially replace Courtois started after their second game — a 1-0 loss to Minnesota United where the club managed zero shots on target despite having 65 per cent of the ball.

In addition to the unsatisfactory on-field product, Gervais alluded to an off-field issue that contributed to Courtois’s early dismissal but declined to elaborate.

Montreal sits dead last in the Eastern Conference with a minus-seven goal differential, the worst in the league. The club is still seeking its first win this year and hasn't scored since a season-opening 3-2 loss to Atlanta United on Feb. 22.

Montreal, however, faced difficult circumstances with seven consecutive road games to begin the season. The team next plays Saturday at Chicago Fire, its second-last match before hosting Charlotte FC in its home opener April 12.

Courtois was also forced to field teams without several key players. Designated player Giacomo Vrioni and fellow marquee off-season addition Jalen Neal had yet to play this season due to injury.

"We do have some injuries, but when you look at the core of players that we made the playoffs with, the leadership core is still there and with more depth," said Gervais. "We have a deeper roster, we’ve been able to double up at every position, and we expected more. We had all of training camp to work on this, and now we have a hard time just keeping the ball."

Gervais said that Donadel will have time and leniency during his interim tenure as the club is more focused on giving him the resources to succeed rather than finding a replacement as quickly as possible

The head coaching position in Montreal has been a revolving door since their entry into MLS as Courtois was the club’s 10th head coach since 2012. 

He was hired to replace Hernan Losada on Jan. 9, 2024, by since-departed chief sporting officer Olivier Renard after two seasons as head coach of Columbus Crew 2, the reserve team of MLS’s Columbus Crew.

“If you look at the global average (for a coach at one team) it’s two or three years. It’s a difficult and demanding post and what we ask of our coach is a significant challenge,” said Gervais. "We ask them to help develop young talent with the resources we have and we’re aware of that, but we’re not going to keep someone just for the sake of saying we have stability."

Courtois’s first season in Montreal featured a surprising quarterfinal loss to lower-tier Forge FC in the Canadian Championship and an early exit from the Leagues Cup.

However, an impressive late season run of form saw the 46-year-old native of Lyon, France help Montreal reach the MLS Eastern Conference wild-card round, losing at home to Atlanta, despite having one of the league's lowest payrolls.

Significant turnover followed as Montreal restructured its front office, revamped its coaching staff and said goodbye to a swath of players during the off-season.

When training camp opened in January, Gervais said Courtois helped choose his new players and staff, including Donadel, a former player who had interviewed for a coaching position before Courtois was hired.

Gervais also said his expectations of Courtois had increased heading into his second season.

“He’s got a year under his belt, he’s got his fingerprints (on the team), he understands better who we want to be also, the way we want to play,” Gervais said on Jan. 10. “I expect an improvement from last year in terms of consistency. We were very inconsistent last year. I expect us to be better defensively as well and our press has to be better.”

Donadel played as a midfielder for Montreal from 2015 to 2018, registering three goals and 10 assists in 67 MLS games.

Gervais added that the former Italian youth international was essentially “a hometown guy,” citing his status as a fan favourite and love for the city.

The 41-year-old Italian began his managerial career with ACF Fiorentina’s youth academy in 2018 and served as the Serie A side’s first-team assistant coach in 2020 and 2021.

He then joined FC Spartak Moscow of the Russian Premier League as an assistant in December 2021 before working as head coach of Serie C club US Ancona in 2023.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 24, 2025.