CF Montreal has fired head coach Laurent Courtois after a poor start to the Major League Soccer season.
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.
“CF Montréal would like to thank Laurent for his contributions to the club,” the team said in a brief statement.
President and chief executive officer Gabriel Gervais was scheduled to speak with reporters at Montreal’s training complex Monday afternoon. Courtois is the first MLS coach to be dismissed this season.
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.
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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.
The head coaching position in Montreal has been a revolving door. Courtois was the club’s 10th head coach since the team entered MLS in 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.
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.
But the 46-year-old native of Lyon, France, helped 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.
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.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
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