Yes, CF Montreal has had a rough start to the season. But the last few weeks have been encouraging in the eyes of its vice-president and chief sports officer, Olivier Renard.
“I’m not too favorable to the mid-season results, because we are still very far from our objectives and there are still a lot of games to play,” said Renard during training on Thursday at Center Nutrilait. You’ve seen it like we have: there’s been bad, very bad, and good. We are in a much more positive phase. »
CF Montreal currently sits ninth and last in the playoffs in Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference. His record of 7-9-1 for 22 points isn’t the best, but Renard likes to look better at the team’s last 14 games in all competitions to assess his club.
“In the last 14 games we have nine wins, four losses and a draw. If we had been able to have this average since the start of the season, it would have been much better, he philosophized. Not that the standings are catastrophic, far from it: we’re still in the picture for the playoffs, which is the club’s No. 1 objective. We had a complicated start to the season. We had good young people who seized their chance. It is true that they were launched into the heat of the action a little too quickly, but it was the force of things with the departures and the injuries. »
Renard also expected this difficult start to the season after the departures of Ismaël Koné, Alistair Johnston, Joaquin Torres and Djordje Mihailovic, in particular.
“It’s the swing of the pendulum with the great season we’ve had. The players also wanted to leave: it has nothing to do with the lack of desire to play here, but these are sporting ambitions. When a club does well, there is more and more interest in its players. It will happen again in the weeks, months and years to come. That’s how it works, especially in European football.
“We had a lot of injuries too,” he added later in the conversation. Fortunately, we had the series of 11 games in about thirty days, which was huge. Players and staff have recovered from injuries. We managed to put all this in order to have the maximum number of players available. »
Surely that’s why Renard didn’t panic when his club — and his new head coach — had a rocky start to the season.
“We’re starting to get used to it: every start of the season, it’s the same kind of questions and the same kind of stress. We also had a bad start to the 2022 season. The important thing is that the club gives the chance to the players it has signed.
“We’re very happy with the quality of the squad for what we put in and the quality of the players and the league experts who are waiting for us at the bottom of the standings. I remain convinced that we have a team capable of providing good football and attracting people to the stadium who will have fun. »
Moreover, if some have interpreted the departure of Kamal Miller as a gesture of panic, Renard ensures that it was a finely planned transaction.
“It was to improve the team. It is true that with the injuries, (the arrival of Ariel) Lassiter became a necessity afterwards, but the player targeted was Bryce (Duke) and we had to wait for the right moment, with the finances we have. »
As for Hernan Losada, despite the team’s difficult start to the season, Renard never doubted him.
“He arrived in a very delicate context for him, for different reasons: he had to succeed an exceptional year and succeeded Wilfried Nancy who left in the situation that you know. It was important for the club to support him. He was under a lot of pressure, I believe he was 1-6 in his first seven games. We remained calm as a club and we talked more with the players than with him, because he knew it was going to be complicated at the start. Not as complicated, but complicated. »
That doesn’t mean Renard wouldn’t like to see some changes to the Montreal style, though.
“It’s true that in the style of play, I don’t hide from you that I expect to see better football. But we are starting from so far with tense situations on the left and on the right, the important thing is to take the points and when the boat resumes its cruising speed, I hope that the players will find a style that the club and I hope that ‘they reach. It’s true that the coach came up with ideas for a more forward style, but he agrees with me on what we would like to have on the pitch, beyond victory or defeat. »
CF Montreal will resume operations on June 21 when they host Nashville SC.
