CF Montreal hope to have the right fit with new head coach Laurent Courtois

Laurent Courtois has spent much of his professional career trying to live up to expectations.

Growing up in Lyon, France, he was singled out for his talent on the soccer pitch at an early age. And while that talent provided him with a wealth of opportunity in the sport over his 15-year playing career, he now says that looking back, it might have also shielded him from some of the guidance he needed to develop and maximize his success.

His foray into coaching started as a way to correct that.

"Coaching was more about what can I give back to the young me that I feel I didn't get," Courtois said when he sat down for a one-on-one interview with CBC Montreal during CF Montreal training camp this month.

Courtois played for eight different clubs in France, England, Spain and the United States. Along the way, he learned how to settle into a new city and a new club things he wished someone had told him when he was starting out.

"You can't just only train hard and go home," he said. "You need to speak the language, you need to learn the culture, you need to make an effort."

Communication and connection with players has become the heart of his coaching philosophy. It's a philosophy that he constructed in the developmental levels of the sport and has earned himself a reputation as "a player's coach."

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New head coach of CF Montreal grew up playing soccer

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Laurent Courtois, a former professional soccer player hailing from Lyon, France, has transitioned into coaching with a focus on nurturing young talent and fostering player-coach connections.

Courtois started as an assistant for the LA Galaxy's second team before taking a job at the academy for Lyon. In 2019, he returned to the United States for a job with the academy for the Columbus Crew SC and for the last two years he guided Columbus Crew 2, the development team for the current MLS Champions.

"[All players] just want a connection and they want directions," Courtois said, no matter if it's their first professional game or their 300th.

Now as the head coach of CF Montreal's senior team, the biggest coaching job he's ever had, Courtois's philosophy will be put to the test like never before.

The CF Montreal Coaching Carousel

Courtois enters into a role in Montreal that hasn't exactly been a model of stability. Since the club joined the MLS in 2012, Courtois is the squad's 10th head coach.

The last coach, Hernan Losada, lasted only one season. He arrived in town with a reputation as a hard-nosed coach who demanded a lot from his players. Perhaps to his detriment, that approach didn't appear to change.

There were multiple reports of Losada butting heads with high-profile players and when he was dismissed in November, sporting director Olivier Renard said his inability to be flexible with his philosophy was one of the reasons why he let him go.

Courtois, meanwhile, says his approach is a perfect fit with what Renard and the club are looking for.

"Everything matched in terms of what the club needed, and the roster with the way that it's built," Courtois said.

"I don't know much the (speaking) French part played into it, but in terms of the playing style and how young this roster is and with what I did with the Crew, everything matched."

Renard has also provided Courtois with some additional offensive firepower this season.

In 2023, the team's top scorer, Mathieu Choinire, had only five goals. To remedy that, Renard has added Uruguayan striker Matias Coccaro and the former MLS MVP Josef Martinez.

"The roster that I have here is a privilege. What I'm trying to do since day one here was to tell the guys that we're not going to chase you. You're going to be in charge of the environment that you're going to create and if you want the new guys to be on board, it's because you guys set the tone with the environment," Courtois said.

Adding to Courtois's challenge this season is the schedule. Due to ongoing issues with Montreal's Olympic Stadium roof, the team is unable to play any home games until mid-April when Saputo Stadium can host games outdoors.

CF Montreal will play six games on the road to open the year, starting in Orlando on Saturday.

On the plus side, in part due to a frenzy over securing a seat for Lionel Messi's visit to Montreal in May, season ticket sales for the club have hit unprecedented levels. The hope is it will translate into an enhanced home field edge that the team's new coach can take advantage of.

That's help Courtois will likely embrace, as he endeavors to live up to expectations, not as a player this time, but as a coach tasked with making Montreal's soccer team into a success on the pitch.