While Josef Martinez is pouting, the arrival of new faces at CF Montreal will perhaps give him material to happily wrinkle his features.
Because the CFM could hardly ask for more in terms of enthusiasm from newcomers Caden Clark and Jahkeele Marshall-Rutty.
“Their age and their background mean that they are very hungry, and they are very eager to progress,” said Laurent Courtois about them, Thursday, after training at the Nutrilait Center. The session took place the day after the complete closure of the MLS transfer market, during which the CFM was particularly active.
“We want to breathe new life into it,” Courtois stressed. “We also want to build not only on the present, but also on future deadlines.”
When is the next CF Montreal game?
CF Montreal will play its next game on August 24 at Saputo Stadium against the New England Revolution. The match will be broadcast exclusively on the Apple TV streaming platform.
Clark and Marshall-Rutty arrive in the Quebec metropolis after leaving their family nests in Minnesota and Toronto respectively. They come with the desire to find consistency in their favorite positions. Both are well aware of the club’s philosophy, which could offer them the springboard needed to launch a European career. As Djordje Mihailovic, Alistair Johnston and Ismaël Koné did before them.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Caden Clark of CF Montreal during training at the Nutrilait center.
“There are some great players who have come through here and excelled,” Marshall-Rutty said. “I hope I’m the next one.”
But all things in their own time. For Clark, the return home to Minnesota, after a short European stint with Leipzig and a stint with New York City FC, will have lasted only six months. He hopes to have found in Montreal a place to really progress.
“I was in a situation where I wasn’t playing my favorite position,” the American explained Thursday. “My team was going through a transition period. It’s never easy to leave home, but I trust the people here, and they trust me.”
Clark sees himself as an attacking midfielder, either a number 10 or a number 8. In Montreal, Bryce Duke is the automatic playmaker… but only really shows up every other game, and even then. It feels like Clark, with his high potential, has a great opportunity to seize.
I want to come here and become one of the main players in this team, he admits. That said, we can talk about it for a long time, but I have to demonstrate it on the pitch. I have to gain the trust of my attackers and midfielders, so that they are willing to give me the ball.
Caden Clark
Working on “invisible soccer”
The midfielder is only 21 years old, but he addresses the media on Thursday with surprising maturity. Especially when it comes to his career and the pitfalls that eventually led him to the CFM. “I’ve grown a lot,” he believes.
He talks about the importance of healthy eating, and going to bed at a reasonable hour to get a good night’s sleep. Twenty-one years, it was said.
“They are small things, but they really make a difference.”
Clark is also aware that as a young player, “mistakes” are going to be made. “I’ve been playing this game since I was three years old. Are you going to lose confidence because you made one mistake?”
He probably doesn’t realize it, but this statement echoes what Laurent Courtois said in his very first speech to the Montreal media, last January. He wanted his flock “to have the confidence to make mistakes.”
PHOTO DAVID ZALUBOWSKI, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Laurent Courtois
The kind of approach the coach regrets not having had in his own playing career.
“When I was 17-18-19, no one explained to me what you really need to improve on to have a career,” he says today. “Invisible soccer, the locker room. That’s the perspective I wanted to start coaching with. And when you have kids who have great potential, who are hungry and who are so happy to be there, for me, it’s a pleasure.”
“Its development is our success”
Along those lines, Courtois was also pleased with the excitement displayed by Jahkeele Marshall-Rutty in training this week.
Arriving from arch-rival Toronto FC, the right-back, who can also play as a winger, was “blocked” in John Herdman’s chessboard there. In the shadow of a certain Federico Bernardeschi, it was difficult to stand out.
“The little one, his eyes shine because he knows we are here to develop him,” Courtois said. “His development is our success. That’s what we’re going to focus on in the future.”
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Jahkeele Marshall-Rutty (center) of CF Montreal during a practice at the Nutrilait center.
Our discussion with JMR goes in the same direction.
“When my club told me that CF Montreal had interest in me,” says the player, “I spoke to Corey [Wray, le consultant à la direction sportive]and the coaching staff. My decision became easier to make, because they told me about the plans they had.”
Marshall-Rutty signed his first professional contract at 15 with TFC. He is now 20. But if his last seasons have been complicated, with irregular starts, he assures “to have had his chances”.
He doesn’t make much of the unusual nature of a transaction between Montreal and Toronto. Especially since Reds fans are having a hard time digesting the fact that one of the club’s gems has gone to its biggest rival.
“I try not to read too much into what’s being said in the media,” he said. “I know this rivalry is important to the fans, and it’s important to me. But I just want to get better, and that’s why I made this decision.”