CF Montréal now need a coach and an owner, and Stade Saputo isn't built for MLS winters

CF Montréal will start 2027 without the coach who finished 2026, and possibly without the family that has owned the club for more than three decades. Managing director Luca Saputo said Wednesday that caretaker Philippe Eullaffroy will not return as first-team head coach, two days after his father, Joey Saputo, put the club up for sale and refused to rule out relocation.

The coaching decision is the easy part to explain. Eullaffroy replaced Marco Donadel on an interim basis in April, after Montréal opened the season with six losses in seven games, and things did not get much better. Montréal finished last in the Eastern Conference at 6-20-8 with 26 points, their lowest total since joining MLS in 2012, according to The Canadian Press. Eullaffroy will move into another role within the organization.

It was not only the league. Montréal also lost the Canadian Championship final to Forge FC of the lower-tier Canadian Premier League, and frustrated fans boycotted games late in the season.

Joey Saputo, whose family has controlled the club since its Montreal Impact days in 1993, said Monday that staying in the city will not be a condition of the sale. "I would love for the club to stay here in Montréal, but if the club doesn't find a local buyer and I get an offer and the club needs to be relocated, then I have no choice, and that's the decision I will take," he said at Stade Saputo. Any move would need MLS approval, and the club says the priority is to find Québec-based investors.

The building he spoke in is part of the problem. MLS moves to a summer-to-spring calendar in 2028, after the 2027 sprint season, and Stade Saputo is not winterized. The Olympic Stadium next door, now under renovation, could eventually be an option, but it is still years away from hosting events, The Canadian Press reported. Saputo said the family will keep working on a lease there and on bringing Canada Soccer's National Training Centre to Montréal, which the club says could become its new home.

Forbes valued Montréal at $440 million in February, which makes it one of the least valuable teams in MLS. Saputo insisted that money had nothing to do with the decision, saying the family's and the club's finances were "never in question." But he also tied future spending to a lease deal with the Olympic Park, saying that with one, "maybe at that particular point in time, we can start spending in line with some of the other teams."

That leaves a short list of jobs for whoever comes in, starting with a coach before the 2027 sprint season opens on Feb. 21 against Charlotte FC. The bigger question is the one Saputo left open: whether the buyer who can fix the stadium problem is a buyer who wants to stay in Montréal.