See Montreal starts the Post-Laurent Courtois era with a visit to the Chicago Fire on Saturday, and they are determined to give interim boss Marco Donadel every chance to succeed.
Montreal fired Courtois after a little more than a season on Monday, where the club bothered the classification of the Eastern Conference with one point from five games.
They have lost their last four in a row, with a 3-0 defeat on Nashville SC last Saturday.
The assistant of Courtois, Marco Donadel, will lead the team on an interim basis, and Chief Executive Gabriel Gervais says that the Italian has the full support of the club.
“We are thinking about it for about four weeks now,” said Gervais about the change of Montreal in the Dugout. “It is not so much the results, it is more the versions we have seen.
“We saw a team without a coherence with frustrated players and a lack of Vechtgeest sometimes, so we thought we were now the time to do it.
“We are going to give Marco Donadel every chance to succeed. At the moment it is an interim situation. We are going to give Marco a chance in the short term.”
L'Entraîneur-Chef Par Intérim Marco Donadel au Travail
Interim head coach Marco Donadel in action #cfmtl pic.twitter.com/dg2xjg2fWZ
– CF Montréal (@cfmontreal) 28 March 2025
Opponents Chicago won three consecutive games for the first time since July 2023, while last won four in a row between June and July in 2017.
Former American coach Gregg Berhalter has supervised a dramatic improvement of the Fortuin of De Brand, where his team takes 10 points of their first five games of 2025.
Midfielder Kellyn Acosta said about Berhalter: “He has definitely made some enormous progress only to our entire environment and organization.
“I think we have made a number of positive changes in the low season. He is proof of that; a lot of credit goes to him to get the right staff around him.
“It's a great feeling in the group. I think boys really buy. They love Gregg, and it has been positive everywhere.”
Players to watch
Chicago Fire – Hugo Cuypers
Cuypers scored for the second time in his fire brigade career in four straight matches in the regular season and also does this between May and June 2023.
Only two players in fire history have found the net in five consecutive games of the regular season-Robert Beric in 2020 and David Accam in 2017.
CF Montreal – Prince Owusu
Montreal did not score in their last four games in the regular season, equal to the longest series of league games without a goal in their MLS history (four straight ahead in 2018 and 2023).
The last team that went five consecutive MLS matches without goal was Chicago, who did this from August to September 2023.
Owusu has had seven shots this season with 2.52 expected goals (XG) in MLS, but has scored only one goal. He will rediscover his form for the goal here.
Match forecast – Draw
Chicago has won their last two home games against Montreal, their third two-match home winning streak in the head-to-head series of the clubs.
However, the fire has never won three straight home matches against Montreal.
One point of Montreal by five games is the same as their worst start of a season in club history, together with their first MLS campaign in 2012.
Montreal has never collected less than three points from their first six games of a season earlier, and they are confronted with a tough test against a Chicago team in good shape, but can a bounce in the new manager help them earn something?
Opta wins probability
Chicago Fire – 39.6%
CF Montreal – 33.8%
Drawing – 26.6%
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