Montreal Fires Coach, Beats New York Red Bulls 4-1, and Now Wants to String Wins Together Against NYCFC

CF Montreal is done messing around. After limping through the opening month with a 1-6-0 record that had everyone questioning everything, the club fired head coach Marco Donadel on April 12 and brought in Philippe Eullaffroy as interim boss. Last Saturday, Eullaffroy delivered the goods in his debut: a 4-1 home victory over the New York Red Bulls at Saputo Stadium. Now Montreal wants to prove that wasn't a one-hit wonder when they host New York City FC on Saturday afternoon.

The Smile Is Back (Sort Of)

Eullaffroy is 62 years old and already thinking bigger picture. Yeah, he'll take the win, but his real mission is resetting the entire culture. "There's a word we've used perhaps most often; it was 'smile,'" he said. "We wanted to bring back the smile to all corners of the team and staff." The second word? "Intensity. We wanted to be an animal, very intense, who does everything to win." You can't fake that kind of energy. Last time out, Prince Owusu found the back of the net to push his season total to five goals in his second year with the club. Wiki Carmona chipped in three more. Montreal now sits at 2-6-0 with six points, still in 13th place in the Eastern Conference ahead of only Philadelphia and Atlanta.

NYCFC Trying to Snap a Nightmare Stretch

New York City FC looked like a real team through four games, winning three of them. Then something broke. Now they're winless in their last five matches, including a brutal 4-4 draw versus FC Cincinnati where they coughed up two stoppage-time goals. Head coach Pascal Jansen isn't making excuses. He's pointing back to a March 22 loss to Inter Miami CF as the moment things started to crack. "There's a few things that happened in the game against Miami which I've seen come back and it's been specifically addressed," Jansen said. "We've made ourselves aware of a couple things that have to be banned from our game in order to have the results that we're looking for."

NYCFC (3-3-3, 12 points) still leads the Eastern Conference with 19 goals, paced by Nicolas Fernandez's MLS second-best eight goals. Agustin Ojeda has scored three times. But right now? The scoreboard says 0-3-2 over five games. That's not a team playing clean soccer. Montreal smells blood.

This article was created with AI assistance and reviewed by Seattle On Tap editorial staff. Always verify information with official team sources.