(Columbus) “I simply said to my wife: ‘There are things I accept, things I don’t accept, and maybe we will be unemployed.’ »
For Wilfried Nancy, the decision was made. Before the Columbus Crew even entered the picture, the head coach of CF Montreal was going to leave his post. Whether he finds himself unemployed at the end of the season, or at the helm of a new team.
“Mid-season, I said I wasn’t coming back,” explains Nancy in a calm tone, during an interview lasting more than 45 minutes with your La Presse representative. We are at the Crew premises in Columbus, two days before the final clash on the calendar between his old club and his new club.
“Yes, there was an option [to my contract]. But at the end of the day, I didn’t want to stay. »
Outside, the weather is chilly, the sky is grayish. Practice ended about an hour earlier at the OhioHealth Performance Center, opened in 2021 near the old Crew stadium, a few miles north of downtown.
Nancy sits in the team conference room, facing away from the large windows overlooking the quiet street leading to the facility. With La Presse, the technician returns in detail to the reasons which pushed him to leave CF Montreal last year.
But first, let’s take a moment to recall the facts. Nancy, with the organization for 11 years, was hired as head coach of CF Montreal after the hasty departure of Thierry Henry, just before the 2021 season. He enjoyed great success that year, missing the playoffs. barely.
In its second year, his club broke all records and rose to second place in the Eastern Association. But in the meantime, an unexpected loss against Sporting Kansas City in July led to an altercation between Nancy and owner Joey Saputo behind the scenes. Saputo storms out into the press room, accosts its president Gabriel Gervais and loudly tells him that his “coach has no respect” for him. The scene unfolds before the eyes of the author of these lines. We will come back to this.
When Nancy was hired by the Crew last December, La Presse revealed that the coach was ready to leave his position that evening. But the leaders of his locker room convinced him a few days later to stay until the end of the season. The group comes out galvanized and goes on to achieve good results afterwards.
The street behind was said to be quiet. Not quite. A black cat crosses it, unbeknownst to our interlocutor. Which continues.
“What people don’t know is that…”
Long silence.
“Around May, or April, my agent contacted the club. To ask what my future was. And for the club, it was too early to talk about that. »
He talks about it in this context, today, because, without a doubt, this interaction between his agent and the club weighed heavily in the balance. For Nancy, the work that had been accomplished clearly deserved some recognition.
“We never talked about money,” he emphasizes straight away, a version of the facts which contradicts our information published last winter indicating that the coach had started to be more financially ambitious at that time. .
Its pact with the CFM expired at the end of the year, but the club had an option to extend it for one season. It was finally initiated, in particular with the aim of obtaining compensation from the Crew, since Nancy thus remained employed by Montreal.
“I only had a few years left on my contract, so it was a matter of finding out,” Nancy adds. He refers to coaches in recent MLS history whose contracts were renewed when there were “still two or three years” left on the agreements.
He talks about the “pride” he takes in the way he “acted in adversity.”
“We proved things, and I can tell you that it wasn’t easy,” he insists, the “we” including his coaching staff. Staff who mostly followed him to Columbus.
“No one knew Djordje [Mihailovic]. He may have been a talented player, but no one knew him. Ismaël [Koné], no one knew him. Alistair Johnston, no one knew him. »
He cites these players in particular, because the three were transferred at a high price, and at a high profit for Montreal. “I’m very proud that we were able to bring a lot of money to the club. »
He does not say it literally, but we deduce that this is where his desire for the CFM to recognize sooner what it was building at the Nutrilait Center was born from.
Nancy confirms that he did indeed have a disagreement with Saputo on July 9, 2022, behind the scenes at the Montreal venue. And when we tell him the scenario of the evening and the following days described a little above, he denies nothing.
“Whether there is an altercation with the owner, I live well with that. I’m not surprised or anything. I’m not someone who keeps quiet, but I respect people. I did not do anything wrong. My job is to be a coach, it’s to train the players, it’s to report to my owner. I’m my own boss in the field, and otherwise, I have no problem having a conversation with anyone. None. But you have to know how to speak. »
Nearly a year after her departure, Nancy remains grateful to Montreal for giving her a chance at the professional level, while mentioning that her hard work partly explains this.
He doesn’t “hold grudges” either, he says. In an interview with 98.5 FM in September, he revealed that the CFM had prevented the Crew from training on the turf at the Nutrilait Center – a standard in the league – forcing the visitors to do so on a synthetic field.
If Montreal needs it, the OhioHealth Performance Center turf is at its disposal.
“My players gave the answer [during a 4-2 victory at Saputo stadium], he says, smiling. I’m not a motivator, telling them, “Hey, guys, did you see what they did?” I don’t care about that. I smile, I laugh. They will come here, and they will have access to everything. »
