‘Impossible is an Opinion’: Crew Coach Wilfried Nancy’s Unlikely Journey to the MLS Cup

The quote was on a T-shirt within a week. As the rainy afternoon of Dec. 9 blurred into evening, after the fireworks but before the confetti, Columbus Crew head coach Wilfried Nancy stood on the pitch at Lower.com Field and reflected on his team’s journey to an MLS Cup championship in his first season at the helm. 

Speaking with sideline reporter Katie Witham in his deep French accent, Nancy thought back to the beginning of the season. He remembered telling his players, “Impossible is an opinion”—a phrase that made for snappy Instagram captions and a snazzy Homage tee.  

If anyone understands that mantra, it’s the franchise that wasn’t supposed to be around anymore and the fan base that rallied to save it. For an organization that improbably transferred to new ownership and came back from the brink of relocation to win MLS Cup in 2020, perhaps nothing seems far-fetched anymore—certainly not the thought of shooting back to the top after two years out of the playoffs. 

Still, the scene at LDC almost seemed too good to be true. This was the team’s third MLS Cup victory but the first to be won in front of a raucous home crowd. In 2008, back when Major League Soccer held its championship game at a neutral site, the Crew won their first league title in Southern California. In 2015, Columbus hosted Portland but sent the local fans home disappointed. A near-empty stadium due to COVID-19 precautions made the 2020 title feel not quite real. The 2023 campaign, however, wrapped up like a fairy tale in front of a euphoric mass of Crew partisans, who roared their approval except when mercilessly booing MLS commissioner Don Garber for his role in trying to move the team. 

For Nancy, one of the architects of this triumph, the win was almost secondary. It’s not that he failed to appreciate his first major trophy as a coach, which also made him the first Black head coach to win MLS Cup. When the final whistle blew on the Crew’s 2-1 win over defending champions Los Angeles FC, Nancy was reveling in the moment like everyone else. But in his postgame interview, he focused less on the result than how Columbus attained it: “We played our way. I’m so proud.” 

➽ That’s not empty coachspeak. Nancy is a “trust the process” kind of guy. He believes that when well-trained athletes collaborate with joy and boldness, good results are inevitable. He says he’s in the business of making memories, and on that front, he tends to succeed. A Wilfried Nancy team is never boring. 

On Nancy’s watch, the Crew has adopted a distinctive, electric brand of soccer focused on regaining the ball from opponents as quickly as possible and bravely pushing forward into the attack. It’s an aggressive style that requires a lot of trust among teammates, rooted in a perspective Nancy developed through traveling the world, taking risks and becoming a careful student of human nature. 

“What I’ve learned is you have to be courageous,” Nancy says during a January interview in the Huntington Field Club at Lower.com Field. “So for me, I like when we try things. I like when we are proactive. I like when we are the protagonist.” 

Nancy is big on authenticity and holistic thinking. He won’t smile just because somebody points a camera at him. But when his grin comes naturally, it is broad and contagious, as if flowing from somewhere deep within him.  

That enthusiastic warmth animates his methodology, which he calls “the infinite game”—an ever-evolving attempt to execute at the highest level, one repetition at a time. Hearing him describe it is like listening to a vibrant philosophy lecture. 

“You have to be good tactically, but you have to be good also at leading people,” Nancy says. “My vision, first of all, is to develop people—help them to become a better me—and to develop players. Everything is connected. I cannot disassociate the player and the human being. Because the human being has to feel good to be good at what he does, soccer-wise or another job.” 

Nancy’s understanding of psychology directly plays into the X’s and O’s of his strategy. Some of that inspiration comes from observing his 12-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, who constantly “re-educate” him on human nature. “We are all human beings,” he says. “We are big kids.” 

How do Nancy’s kids inform his coaching? For one thing, “When I play with my son, when he doesn’t win, he cries. So I don’t need to tell my player that ‘you have to win’ because I know that they’re going to be upset [if they lose].” Instead, he coaches them to stick to the plan and play to the best of their ability. Similarly, when his kids rejected instruction about how to putt a golf ball in favor of figuring it out themselves, Nancy was reminded that pro athletes often need space to find their own solutions, too. 

Nancy’s not just mining his parenting moments for coaching wisdom. He’s also drawing from his own experiences on the pitch. As a sweeper, he was savvy and technically competent but not particularly fast. Lacking superstar traits, he instead thrived in moments of mind meld with his teammates. 

“I really enjoyed when we were able to have the same idea at the same exact moment,” Nancy says. “We were able to score a goal because we manipulated the opposition, and the forward scored a tap-in, an easy goal. … At the same time, without talking, we had the same idea.”  

With those instances of cooperative brilliance in mind, NancyBall is designed to create certainty for his players and uncertainty for their opponents. Nancy is fanatical about his team establishing a consistent shape on the pitch, an agreed-upon structure within which his players have the freedom to create. 

Midfielder and team captain Darlington Nagbe goes way back with Nancy’s predecessor, Caleb Porter, who led Columbus to the 2020 MLS Cup but was fired after missing the playoffs in 2021 and 2022. Porter coached Nagbe in college at the University of Akron, in MLS with the Portland Timbers and yet again with the Crew. The most striking change under Nancy, Nagbe says, was “how specific he wanted us to play in terms of each position, each player understanding what the other player has to do.” Nagbe continues, “Know your role—not just your own role, but where your teammate’s supposed to be, as well. He was very detailed in that, in terms of positioning, where he wanted guys to be.” 

Nancy wants his players to depend on each other, to count on teammates coming through under pressure. Although much of the coach’s program is intuitive, it does require players to resist the ingrained tendency to play conservatively. He does not want his team to be content with completing easy passes. 

“You have to be brave, and you have to play what you see,” says Crew defender Rudy Camacho, a fellow Frenchman who played for Nancy at CF Montréal and reunited with him in Columbus via trade last summer. “You cannot be afraid to play a teammate if he has someone on his back. … You have to trust him.” 

Nancy’s approach has its weaknesses, such as leaving the team more vulnerable to counterattacks. The Crew played wildly entertaining soccer last year and led MLS with 67 goals; they also had a habit of conceding late goals and failing to close out games. But if NancyBall is an imperfect system, those who buy in find it liberating. “You want to play football,” Camacho says. “Football means you take risks. You don’t hide.” 

➽ Nancy was born in the northern French city of Le Havre in 1977, to a father from the French Caribbean region of Guadeloupe and a mother with roots in the West African nations of Senegal and Cape Verde. Because his dad was in the French navy, he spent much of his childhood traveling the globe. He says those formative years taught him to be open-minded and empathetic, curious about what makes different kinds of people tick. 

Amid all that change, however, there was a constant: Young Wilfried always had a soccer ball at his feet. He remembers kicking it all the way to the grocery and back on trips to pick up baguettes. The family settled in Toulon when he was 11, and by 14, he was in the local pro club’s youth academy system. By 18, he got his first start as a center back for Toulon in France’s second division. He spent a decade bouncing around various French clubs before once again moving an ocean away. 

When his contract with the French club Orléans expired in 2005, Nancy was ready for a change. He wanted to transition into coaching, and he always figured he’d get back to traveling the world. His first idea was to relocate to New York, where his mom was living at the time. But after vacationing there, he was contacted by a friend who’d moved to Montréal. During a 10-day visit, the opportunity arose to become a player-coach for the college team at the Université du Québec à Montréal while also taking on coaching work at the private school Collège Stanislas, starting with the U14 girls team. He jumped at the chance. 

Nancy took to Montréal immediately. Within two months, he applied for his permanent resident card. After one outstanding season with UQAM that saw him voted the Most Valuable Player in Quebec, he shifted to the sideline full time. Soon, he was coaching in the area’s top amateur league and with Quebec’s provincial team, as well as co-managing the area’s regional soccer federation. 

In those early Montréal years, Nancy met his future wife, Anna, in a moment of serendipity, a word he has tattooed on his body. As Nancy tells it, one night he and a friend were out dancing at a discotheque. Nancy wasn’t enjoying the vibe and asked to move along to a different club, but the friend insisted on dancing for five more minutes. When they got in the car, his buddy planned to travel by backroads, but Nancy, riding shotgun, insisted they take the main road to facilitate people-watching.  

At a traffic light, Anna caught his eye in an adjacent car. After convincing her to roll down her window, he asked where she was headed. She declined to share that information, but as the light changed to green, a persistent Nancy kept the conversation going. “We caused a traffic jam,” he says with a laugh, recalling the honking from the surrounding vehicles. By the time their cars pulled away, Nancy had procured Anna’s phone number from her friend, which led to months of conversation and, eventually, a first date. Once again, sticking his neck out had paid off. 

Meanwhile, Nancy made himself such an indispensable pillar of the Montréal soccer community that when CF Montréal (then known as the Montréal Impact) launched a youth academy in 2011 ahead of their entry into MLS, they put Nancy in charge. That’s where NancyBall truly began to develop. 

“The academy was a laboratory for me,” he says. His vision for courageous attacking soccer was already in place; working with age levels from U14 up to U20 allowed him to hone those tactics. Nancy’s own strategies went on the backburner in 2016 when he became an assistant for the senior team and was tasked with supporting the agendas of various head coaches. But when global soccer legend Thierry Henry abruptly resigned as Montréal’s coach ahead of the 2021 season, thrusting Nancy into the top job, all those years tinkering with the academy teams came to fruition. 

Though it took a while for Montréal’s players to wrap their heads around Nancy’s vision, by his second season at the helm, they’d become one of the best, most exciting teams in MLS. Yet even as CF Montréal surged to a second place finish in the Eastern Conference, off the pitch, things soured between Nancy and team owner Joey Saputo. A verbal altercation with Saputo after a tough loss in July 2022 (Nancy prefers not to comment on it) caused the coach to request an immediate departure from the team. After consulting with his players, he agreed to remain. But when Columbus came calling after the season wrapped up, Nancy was listening. 

Crew GM and president Tim Bezbatchenko is an expert in seeking out the right players, but he didn’t have much experience finding head coaches. At Toronto FC, he hired Greg Vanney from within. Bezbatchenko and Porter came to Columbus simultaneously. But Bez and his front office team knew they needed to nail this hire. 

Nancy was not among the eight or nine candidates in the first round of interviews because Montréal was still active in the playoffs. But his success—and the knowledge that his relationship with Montréal ownership was rocky—kept him on the Crew’s radar. So near the end of the process, Columbus contacted him. 

Bezbatchenko and Nancy had some history together. In 2013, when the Crew president was working at the MLS league office, he helped launch a program allowing the league’s academy directors to study for the Elite Formation Coaching License. Nancy took the inaugural course, as did the Crew’s current technical director Marc Nicholls and assistant general manager Issa Tall. “It always helps when you have a previous relationship with that person,” Bezbatchenko says. “You’re not starting from a goal kick. You’re over half field.” 

The Crew admired Nancy’s personal values, his coaching style and his tactical acumen. Nancy felt like he aligned with the city’s culture and the organization’s vision. Despite spending more than 17 years in Montréal, he always knew he would move on to a new adventure someday. So he took the job and moved his wife and kids, none of whom had ever lived outside Montréal, to Central Ohio.

➽ In January 2023, at the dawn of preseason, Nancy held a meeting with his new team. It was all about establishing core values that would create a safe environment for players to figure things out together through trial and error. 

“When I started [coaching], I was asking the player, ‘What are your values?’ ” Nancy says. “But what I’ve learned is, it’s not the players who are going to decide the values. It’s me. Because I am the leader. And I want to create an environment for the player to express themselves.” 

Among the most important of those values is the freedom to fail, but it didn’t come naturally to everyone. “When there is a new coach, all the players want to do well,” Nancy says. “But what I didn’t like is they didn’t want to make mistakes. They were too safe on the pitch when they were playing.” 

Nancy and his assistants combated that mentality by designing extremely complex training exercises that forced players to mess up. He wanted them to understand that in soccer and life, failure is normal. “Calculated risk, he’s big on that,” Nagbe says. “If it doesn’t work out, it’s OK. Try it again. Try it again. As long as the effort is there, and the intention is right.” 

Within weeks, as the Crew played preseason matches, Nancy was pleased to see a rudimentary version of his vision coming to life on the pitch. When Columbus lost their season opener by three goals in Philadelphia, he could honestly say he was happy with his team’s performance. “Yes, we lost 4-1, but we had a really good game,” Nancy says. “It was the way I wanted to see my team play.” 

Nagbe was impressed with Nancy’s focus on performance over results. “For me personally, that stood out,” Nagbe says. “OK, he truly believes in this process and how he wants us to play. He truly believes that if we can execute, the team can perform that way, the results will follow.” 

Results did indeed follow—a 6-1 win over Atlanta was especially glorious—but by the May 28 game at Nashville, the team was in a tailspin. After leading 1-0 at halftime, Columbus spent the second half gradually falling apart, culminating in a 3-1 loss that sealed a three-game losing streak. In the locker room afterward, a conversation unfolded that both Nancy and Bezbatchenko cited as a turning point. 

“It was a really good moment where Wilfried let the players have the freedom to really express themselves,” Bezbatchenko says. “Rather than being the person that comes in and settles the room and provides guidance or lending a hand of comfort, his tactic is to let the players figure it out.” 

Some players stepped up, others eagerly followed their lead, and Columbus instantly reeled off an eight-game undefeated streak. When the Crew sold superstar Lucas Zelarayán to a Saudi Arabian club in July—an unpopular move among the fanbase—they brought in forward Diego Rossi and continued to refine their game. By the time Camacho joined the Crew in August, he was amazed at how quickly the team had mastered Nancy’s system. 

Despite some more speed bumps, Columbus finished third overall in the MLS standings and entered the playoffs on a roll. But on the road in Atlanta, in the second game of a three-game series, the Crew played with an unfamiliar timidity. “It was not my team,” Nancy says. “We were not brave. We were not courageous.” His response was to take the team to Topgolf together to blow off steam.  

“He’s big on team events,” Nagbe says. “I think he does a great job trying to schedule certain activities for the group. Some guys go out themselves, you have different groups and cliques that like to hang out together, but he’s big on the whole group coming together.” 

In the series’ decisive third match, the Crew vaporized Atlanta. From there, the playoffs shifted to a single elimination format. Columbus went to Florida and made quick work of Orlando, avenging one of the most deflating losses of the season. And in the first playoff edition of the Hell Is Real rivalry, the Crew fell behind 2-0 at FC Cincinnati but rallied to a thrilling, come-from-behind victory, clinching the Eastern Conference title. 

MLS Cup week was abuzz with busyness as friends, family, the media and thousands of spectators descended upon Columbus. Millions of people around the world would be watching. In the pregame locker room, Nancy attempted to cut through the pressure by showing his players photos of themselves as children. 

“I told them I want you to play this final like you were kids,” he says. “When you were kids, you were fighting for everything. You were playing your game because you wanted to win, and you wanted to do well. But you also had joy when you were playing, so try to do the same.” 

They responded with their best match of the season. The highlight was an 11-pass sequence that climaxed with left back Malte Amundsen playing an audacious long-distance pass to a breaking Yaw Yeboah, who blasted the ball into the net. The astounding team goal was a signature flourish for NancyBall, and despite a late rally from LAFC, it stood as the game-winner. Improbably, but certainly not impossibly, the Crew were three-time MLS Cup champions. 

Nancy isn’t lingering in the afterglow. “The way I am as a person, I like to look forward,” he says. “My mother-in-law taught me that, ‘Wilfried, your eyes are in front. Your eyes are not behind. So look forward and move forward.’ ” 

Despite the victory in the MLS Cup finals, he says “we didn’t reach the seven, eight out of 10 regarding what I want to see on the pitch with my players.” So as he approaches the Crew’s Feb. 24 season opener against Atlanta, Nancy is focused not on repeating but refining. 

“Yes, we are champions,” he says. “Yes, I’m happy with that. But I’m eager to get back because I have already new things to add with the way we play.” 

➽ Returning to Montréal as an opposing coach was weird, but in a good way. On Sept. 2, Columbus went into Nancy’s old stomping grounds and throttled CF Montréal 4-2. The win was satisfying for Nancy, but so was the realization that the visitors’ locker room was the same one he’d used as an office years ago when he was launching the youth academy. That day, he marveled at how far he’d come. 

“I was proud of myself, honestly,” Nancy says. “My mom told me, ‘Sometimes, Wilfried, don’t wait for the applause of someone. You can do it by yourself.’ So I like sometimes to say, ‘Well done, Wilfried.’ ” 

Millions of others applauded three months later when Nancy became the first Black head coach to win MLS Cup, 28 seasons in. For Nancy, the milestone was bittersweet. He was proud to be a trailblazer but distressed at the rarity of the achievement. 

Nancy has firsthand experience of the lack of opportunity that prevents Black coaches from advancing up the ranks. He moved to Montréal partially because he saw North America as more open to a diverse pool of candidates. Still, he’s painfully aware that he’ll open this season as the only Black head coach in MLS. In his native France, Antoine Kombouaré is the only Black manager in Ligue 1. None of the managers in Spain, England or Italy’s top leagues are Black. 

“So the question I have is, I don’t understand why we have a lot of Black players, and we don’t have Black coaches,” Nancy says. “There is something wrong. I don’t have the answer, and I don’t like to make assumptions. But there is something wrong.” 

One song that looms large in Nancy’s life is Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Whenever Nancy listens to it, he gets emotional remembering the years when he knew he had what it took to be a coach but no one would give him the chance. He worked hard and remained patient, and when opportunities serendipitously arose, he was prepared to seize them. Maybe it seems like Wilfried Nancy came out of nowhere, but his success had been a long time coming. 

Now he’s hopeful that his example will open doors for other Black coaches. “When I decided to be a coach, it was going beyond the winning part,” Nancy says. “It’s all about ‘What can I do?’ We are all unique. You are unique, and I am unique. So what can I do to inspire?” 

Thus far, he’s done a lot in that regard—much more than you could fit on a T-shirt. 

This story is from the March 2024 issue of Columbus Monthly.