Following a nearly two-month search that started after Caleb Porter was fired on October 10, the Columbus Crew has chosen its new head coach, Wilfried Nancy.
On Monday afternoon, a league source confirmed the news. On Tuesday morning, the team will hold its first press conference. Nancy joins the Crew after leading CF Montreal to a 20-9-5 record and second place in the Eastern Conference.
The crew will be required to pay Montreal as part of the hiring because Nancy was under contract with Montreal for one more season.
Nancy made sense as a candidate from the start, and rumors about him being recruited by Columbus had been around for weeks. Tim Bezbatchenko, the general manager of the Crew, said that his first goal when the search started was to find a coach who knew his place in the club’s structure, from MLS to MLS Next Pro to the academy level, and who had been a successful coach in MLS.
Nancy checks all of those boxes. He led Montreal from being 10th in the East with a 12-12-10 record in 2021 to becoming one of the best teams in the league this past season despite the team’s middle-of-the-road squad spending.
