FC Cincinnati: Yoann Damet should be named head coach

FC Cincinnati are yet to name a new head coach. With time to find one before MLS resumes, they should turn to their current interim, Yoann Damet.

FC Cincinnati finished the 2019 season by naming a head coach to relieve interim chief Yoann Damet. The new guy didn’t last long at all. New Cincinnati head coach Ron Jans uttered a racial slur that brought MLS down on him from the league’s highest authority.

Jans said he was innocently singing a song that unfortunately included the slur. That excuse brought the MLS Players Association into action. The organization asserted that Jans had also blamed the bad publicity on a player’s complaint.

They called that report false and emphasized that a toxic atmosphere had erupted in the organization as a result. And with both the league and players’ association closing in on him, Jans resigned 12 days before the season opener.

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Although Jans crashed and burned in only a few months, FC Cincinnati were not left in shambles. During the offseason, they inked several players who are making believers of supporters and teammates alike.

Those acquisitions include forwards Jurgen Locadia, Yuya Kubo and midfielder Siem de Jong. They join key midfielder Allan Cruz and international player Haris Medunjanin, a midfield artist who arrived from the Philadelphia Union, where he was one of the premier defensive midfielders in MLS.

In the first two games before the season suspension, FC Cincinnati, on the back of these new acquisitions, played with intensity and effectiveness through each 45-minute period. The results might not have been so encouraging, but the performances were promising and showed improvements from a disastrous 2019 campaign.

With the COVID-19 pandemic causing a halt to normal life, the FC Cincinnati front office has to navigate a severely restricted path as they continue their search for a permanent head coach. But do FCC really have to keep up this search, regardless of travel restrictions?

Two-time interim head coach Yoann Damet will become a full-time head coach for someone, probably in MLS. While the first MLS season for FC Cincinnati was a dumpster fire in overall performance, Damet took his opportunity to run the club from the field and became the youngest MLS head coach on his debut with a win over Montreal on May 11, 2019.

Even as he reaches 30, he will still be the youngest head coach and the only one who hasn’t played college or pro soccer. But despite his youth, Damet has proven his coaching chops. The interim head coach has general manager Gerard Nijkamps’s confidence. Nijkamp has spoken extensively about Damet’s ability to guide the players through their brutal first season while visibly improving expertise and quality.

Damet has been cultivating the level of trust from the players as well. Rather than get blown out as happened too often last season, they kept their first two games within a goal. Late in the matches, they created chances to win and proved that they can be a competitive unit in MLS.

MLS is not set to return any time soon, with the latest suspension lasting until May 10. In that period, FC Cincinnati will be making plans for what is hoped to be a much more encouraging second campaign in MLS. And it might just include naming Yoann Damet as head coach, which would be no bad thing.