Gabriel Gervais wants to have reorganized his sports department by the end of 2024. After a busy transfer window, it is on this important file that he will now focus.
So Corey Wray’s term as a consultant is not quite over yet.
Wray has been Gervais’s key right-hand man in the last month, helping him to deliver the many personnel moves needed to breathe new life into the club on the pitch. But Gervais still needs someone who acts as an “extension of the team” to lead the overhaul of the sporting leadership.
“In the last few weeks, he was really in the thick of all the transfers that you’ve seen,” Gervais said Tuesday during a press conference at the Nutrilait Center. “Now, we’re going to take a step back.”
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
Gabriel Gervais
The interim sporting director mentions, for example, that the club has already “used a lot more analytics to choose players.”
That the arrivals of Europeans Dawid Bugaj and Tom Pearce were facilitated by data collected by Bologna recruiters.
That the CFM wants to “strengthen” itself in the areas of “screening”, “recruitment” and “analytics”, precisely.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Dawid Bugaj (center)
In the long run, will the athletic department take the form of a duo like the one formed by Olivier Renard and Vassili Cremanzidis, or a collective of eight to ten people? The latter option is advocated by several MLS clubs, including Toronto FC and the Columbus Crew, incidentally former employers of Wray.
“We look at what works well [ailleurs] “, answers Gervais, without specifying the number of employees his future department will have.
“We will work very closely with Corey to [appliquer] best practices. […] It’s not the same recipe that works for all clubs.”
A collective work
There were departures, there were arrivals: Montreal moved no fewer than 11 players during the MLS summer transfer window. Considering that Gervais had never acted as a sporting director before this summer, how much credit should Corey Wray get through all of this?
“It’s not just Corey Wray, we have the whole team in support and the scouts,” corrects Gervais. “It’s really a collective and team effort.”
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
Montreal moved no fewer than 11 players during the MLS summer transfer window.
But specifically, Wray “knows the sporting directors” of MLS very, very well, as well as the rules, the “contractual side,” the “negotiations,” the “agents.”
“He was the one who was at the front talking with the other sports directors […] and with the MLS. That’s its role.
“He comes to this like a fish to water,” said Gervais. […] We use it to its maximum value.”
For the present and the future
The result? A CF Montreal with a new face for the final stretch of the season. It’s easy to estimate that if they’re ready Saturday, against New England at Saputo Stadium, midfielder Caden Clark and right back Jahkeele Marshall-Rutty will be in the starting lineup.
For Gervais, the acquisitions of this transfer window “fit well with the style of play” that he wants to “advocate”. He in turn affirms that Laurent Courtois was consulted in the process.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Laurent Courtois
All the changes we made, we made them with a view to the present, to make the series. But also for the future, respecting our sporting philosophy.
Gabriel Gervais, President and CEO of CF Montreal
In this regard, the Bleu-blanc-noir recently made an important decision. The MLS asked each of its clubs to choose between the following two models:
- On the one hand, the option of having three designated players and three players from the U22 Initiative, who could be called “young designated players”, or nuggets to develop. Sunusi Ibrahim is one, currently, at the CFM, as Djordje Mihailovic was once.
- On the other, a maximum of two designated players, but four players from the U22 Initiative. Clubs that choose this option also get up to 2 million in general allocation money.
Obviously, CF Montreal opted for the second option.
“When we invest, it’s not that we’re not going to have a designated player anymore,” Gervais clarified. “But when we invest, we’re going to do it with U22 players, and all the advantages that we can have in terms of payroll, with the rules. […] It just makes sense for us to invest in youth, rather than investing in more established players as designated players.”
With MLS increasingly positioning itself as a springboard for young South Americans dreaming of Europe, CF Montreal has every reason to confirm its intentions in this way.
The sports department still needs to be able to unearth these nuggets. An important case, as they said.
“Someone who is not disciplined cannot be here”
Laurent Courtois and Josef Martinez have spoken, confirms Gabriel Gervais. “This case is closed,” the CFM president now claims.
Last week, Courtois said he had suffered a “betrayal” from his star striker after he refused to train for the club’s final game the previous week.
“There is a big, big gap between the person I spoke to on the phone before I signed it [l’hiver dernier] and what the person is doing at the moment,” he said.
For Gabriel Gervais, if Courtois “felt the need to say what he said, it was because he had a reason for doing so.”
The president said he had spoken to the leaders of the locker room on several occasions to stress the importance of “discipline” in all the “little details”.
“For me, it’s non-negotiable. Someone who is not disciplined cannot be here.”