🏆 In the end, the two best managers in CCC are still standing
Almada v. Nancy should delight - and challenge - fans in Concacaf
The Concacaf Champions Cup took twists and turns, as expected. Lionel Messi played in Monterrey (but was eliminated). The Columbus Crew went to Nuevo Leon twice (but weren’t eliminated). A team from Nicaragua beat Club América (which still made the semifinals).
Yet, despite all that, the two best managers are still left standing and will square off Saturday night when Pachuca hosts Columbus Crew to decide the CCC champion and the 2025 Club World Cup place that goes with it.
Both Pachuca manager Guillermo Almada and his Crew counterpart Wilfried Nancy will say it’s their team and the players on the team that will decide Saturday’s final - and any other game. Yet, it’s also clear that these managers have achieved something few others in the region have.
Both have their style of play perfectly placed on a team that knows how to execute that style. They’ve been at their clubs long enough to skim off players who don’t work with their ideas and bring in ones they know will, whether thanks to their playing style or having worked with the player before.
Almada at times borders on having a ‘devil may care’ attitude, with his team selling out to try to win the ball in dangerous places and blocking passing lanes to permit an easy exit out of the back. When teams break the press, they’ve been able to score.
“If we are able to break the press, it’s going to be open and we have to attack,” Nancy said this week. “But what does it mean? It means that four or five guys are going to stay behind. If we lose the ball and are not connected, the game is going to be a ping-pong game. We have to size up those moments. This is about controlling these situations because they’re really good at that.”
It’s true. While they sometimes concede, it more often than not has been Tuzos finding the back of the net.
Their 34 goals in the Liga MX regular season was second only to high-flying Toluca, but they also gave up 27. They gave up 27 in the Apertura as well but managed to score only 16 before acquiring Salomón Rondón as their central forward. Oussama Idrissi joined in September 2023 but truly has plugged in since January, becoming one of Liga MX’s best wingers.
They’ve gotten their freedom to work further forward thanks to the work done in the middle by Nelson Deossa and Erick Sanchez playing in front of him.
The Crew will hope to win the midfield battle by relying on the experience of Darlington Nagbe. They’ll also hope to win the possession battle, with Nancy noting that while the altitude training the team did during the week was necessary, it won’t be as necessary if the team can keep the ball as it likes to do.
While Nancy and his staff typically watch three to four of their opponents’ most recent home matches and a pair of road matches to utilize for film study, he’s noticed many teams totally changing things up when it comes to facing the Crew.
While Pachuca has had more than 20 days without a match to get ready for Saturday, Almada’s style is defined enough that the Crew’s film study likely will come in handy.
“We’re very prepared for tomorrow’s final but we know and respect the opponent in front of us,” Almada said at a news conference Friday. “It’s the champion of MLS with a great manager, a deep squad full of really good players. They’ve done really positive things in this competition too, so we hope to be up to the heights - and I think we will - of a transcendental game for both of us.”
Both these managers should be cherished. Both have taken to the leagues they work in, having coached multiple teams and become at least part of the fabric of each league. Almada really wants a crack at the Mexico national team.
Yet, leaders of Concacaf federations also must note that neither of these managers, clearly at the top of their respective leagues and fighting for a Club World Cup place, were trained here in the region. Nancy was trained in his native France, while Almada wound through various South American leagues as a midfielder before starting his coaching career in his native Uruguay.
There often is talk about coaching education as the great difference-maker, as what still separates the big boys from the strivers. In North America, clubs are producing players, but those players are usually best served leaving for the most critical years of their development.
Of the eight quarterfinalists in this tournament, only two had coaches from the Concacaf region - one lost 7-1 on aggregate while the other fell 9-2.
Foreign managers like Nancy and Almada should always be welcomed in Concacaf. They make soccer in our region better, more fun. But until we learn from them and start producing our own managers of their caliber, the fantasy of supplanting Europe or South America as a player-producing region and, eventually, one of the two strongest regions in the world will remain out of reach.
That’s a macro problem for the region’s top sporting minds to figure out. In the micro, we can flip on our TVs Saturday night or head to the Estadio Hidalgo and enjoy two managers at the height of the sport in the region in a tactical battle.