ST. LOUIS – After a second consecutive season falling short of making the Major League Soccer Playoffs, St. Louis City SC returned to their Downtown West training ground this week. Preparations for the upcoming season started in earnest on Monday, with some new faces joining the City family this offseason.
The two biggest additions, well, so far, are Sporting Director Corey Wray and head coach Yoann Damet. Wray’s appointment was announced in November, a man with plenty of roster-building experience in MLS, a departure from the team’s only previous Sporting Director, Lutz Pfannenstiel.
Pfannenstiel’s globetrotting background has been traded for Corey Wray’s 20+ years working in MLS, working at Toronto FC, Columbus Crew and CF Montreal. In Wray, City adds a Sporting Director who knows the ins and outs of the league’s unique roster rules, something the previous regime had to learn on the job.
“Corey is a progressive sporting director who brings a forward-thinking, holistic approach to building winning teams,” said City SC President and GM Diego Gigliani, in a press release in November. “His extensive knowledge of the MLS landscape, deep squad building and recruiting expertise, and proven track record in creating high performing, sustainable organizations and cultures makes him an ideal fit for the club. He will make us stronger by building upon our existing foundation and working collaboratively with our sporting team to improve in every aspect of our operations.”
Wray was most recently at CF Montreal, where he was first brought on in June 2024 to be a technical consultant, but was named Director of Soccer after the 2024 season. Wray was fired from that post in August of last year as Montreal slumped to a 13th place finish in the MLS Eastern Conference.
To his credit, Wray wasn’t given much to work with by Montreal’s owner Joey Saputo, the team had the lowest payroll in MLS in 2025. Saputo also installed his sons, Luca and Simone, into the sporting department of CF Montreal. When Wray left the club, the Saputo brothers took over his job.
All this is to say, a change of scenery was needed for Wray, and St. Louis City became his first chance to truly build a club in his image. His first task was his most important: hire a new head coach. That man, we found out in December, is Yoann Damet.
Damet spent the past three seasons as an assistant to Wilfried Nancy with the Columbus Crew, where Nancy left this offseason to take on (and be quickly fired from) the managerial role at Scottish giants Celtic FC. Damet was a part of the Columbus coaching staff that won the MLS Cup in 2023.
“I’m honored to be joining City SC and really looking forward to getting to work with the team and building a high-standard environment that represents the fans and this city,” Damet stated in a press release in December. “I want to thank the ownership group, Diego, and Corey for the trust they’ve shown in me. This is an ambitious club, and we’ll work extremely hard every day to be competitive and play an entertaining style of soccer the fans and supporters can relate to and enjoy.”
Remarkably, Yoann Damet began his coaching career at the age of 16 in France coaching youth teams for varying clubs, and earning a degree in sports training with a specialty in soccer from the University of Burgundy in Dijon, France.
Damet took his talents to the CF Montreal Academy in 2014. He spent a few seasons in Montreal’s youth setup before joining FC Cincinnati as an assistant coach in 2017, two years before the team joined MLS.
When Cincy found the jump from USL to MLS a bit difficult, starting 2-7-2 in their inaugural season, the team fired head coach Alan Koch and named Damet the interim head coach while the team found a successor. Damet coached 15 games for the club before CIncinnati hired Dutch manager Ron Jans in August 2019.
Damet took over Cincinnati on an interim basis again in 2020 after Ron Jans resigned while under investigation from Major League Soccer for use of a racial slur, as a complaint was lodged by the Major League Soccer Player’s Association.
Damet left FC Cincinnati after the conclusion of the 2021 season, joining the LA Galaxy as a head coach of LA Galaxy II, and was promoted to the first team staff as an assistant to head coach Greg Vanney. After spending 2022 in LA, Damet moved to his role at Columbus.
“Yoann has all the attributes we were looking for in a manager and aligns closely with the vision and direction we have for this team,” said Sporting Director Corey Wray in December. “He has invaluable experience working with some of the best teams and coaches in the league that I am sure will help him get the best out of our players. Yoann is ambitious, competitive, and does an exceptional job communicating his soccer ideas, but most importantly he values people and relationships. Having worked together before, we already share a foundation of trust which I think will be beneficial as we move the team forward.”
What the City team will look like under Wray and Damet is yet to be seen. David Critchley had a City team playing for nothing but pride down the stretch in 2025 but was finding some success returning to a quick counter attack and a higher defensive press, which were trademarks of the St. Louis team under previous head coach Bradley Carnell.
“As a leader of a team you want to empower people to do their jobs, empower the players on the pitch,” Yoann Damet explained in his first press conference. “For me, success comes from alignment, good communication, and people who are motivated to do their job day by day.”
While fans will, understandably, want the team to return to the MLS Cup Playoffs, Damet preached the process more than the results, while praising the fanbase here in St. Louis.
“We need to feed off the fans’ energy,” said Damet. “They never gave up, and we need to pay that back as soon as we can, but we also can’t get carried away with just winning. Sometimes there is a lesson to learn to build on consistency.”
Consistency and alignment were the key words in the hiring of both Yoann Damet and Corey Wray. In public statements so far, Damet and Wray have preached that the key to success is alignment between the ownership and sporting side of things, and Damet believes that St. Louis has everything to start a successful project that becomes a winning soccer team.
Only a handful of teams in MLS have the facilities up to the standard of St. Louis City’s campus in Downtown West, an appealing prospect for new coaches and sporting directors alike. Having a passionate fanbase that has supported the team through an up-and-down first few seasons also adds to the allure for Yoann Damet.
“There’s not many teams that have a fanbase like there is here in St. Louis, and the resources,” Damet continued. “There’s no better place to come and start a new project, you have all the resources.”
Damet’s coaching staff will be composed of assistant coaches David Sauvry, Marcelo Sarvas, and Colin Rooney as Director of Scouting. Baggio Hušidic stays with the City coaching staff as Individual Player Development Coach, as does goalkeeper and set-piece coach Alex Langer.
David Sauvry was most recently an assistant at FCV Dender EH in the first tier league in Belgium. He was an assistant to Damet with LA Galaxy II in 2022. Damet has known Sauvry for over 20 years.
Marcelo Sarvas was an assistant at Costa Rican club LD Alajuelense, which won the Costa Rican league in 2025. Sarvas also spent time as an assistant to Damet with LA Galaxy II. Sarvas played five seasons in MLS, including winning two MLS Cup Championships with the Galaxy before moving on to the Colorado Rapids and later DC United.
Colin Rooney, a Saint Louis University graduate and STL native, joins City from English Premier League team Everton, where he served as the team’s Senior International Scout. Rooney began his career with Turkish powerhouse Galatasaray as a technical scout, before spending ten years with FC Toronto as their Head of International Scouting.
One man from City’s past will stay a part of City’s future: David Critchley, who took over coaching duties after Olof Mellberg was fired early last season, stays with the club, returning to his role as CITY2 head coach.
“In addition to being excited about Yoann building out the first team coaching staff and adding to our scouting capabilities, having Critch return to lead CITY2 is a win for the club and our CITY2 players, especially with all of the additional first team experience he gained over the last six months,” said City SC Sporting Director Corey Wray.
Critchley was one of the STL City Academy’s first hires back when the team was just a logo on a computer screen and Energizer Park was just an architect’s render of a Downtown St. Louis stadium. Critchley is beloved by first team players who rallied around him as an interim coach in 2025, and returns to working with the next generation with CITY2.
Training has only just begun, with preseason around the corner, and there’s plenty of work for Corey Wray and Yoann Damet to do to turn the tide after two dismal seasons. But Yoann Damet didn’t want to speak about City’s previous failings at his introductory presser.
“I’m not here to dwell on the past,” Damet said. “I’m here to build the future.”
