HFX Wanderers announce Patrice Gheisar as new football club coach | News | Halifax, Nova Scotia
Derek martin has something to smile about.
On a late November day as the frost melts in Halifax, the founder and president of HFX Wanderers FC is all smiles as he greets reporters at the club’s Sackville Street office and talks about the future of his football club.
For the first time in the Wanderers’ four-year history as a Canadian Premier League team, Martin has a coaching change to unveil: On Wednesday, the club announced Patrice Gheisar as its newest bench boss, ending a nearly seven-year search – weekly for one. successor to longtime coach Stephen Hart.
“I wanted to find a manager and I wanted to find a builder,” says Martin.
Gheisar arrives at the club after three seasons as head coach (and five more as assistant coach) with semi-professional League1 Ontario side Vaughan Azzurri, where he guided the club to the 2022 league championship and earned league coach of the year honors. In his three years in charge of the Azzurri, Gheisar compiled a regular season record of 41 wins, five draws and two defeats.
Wanderers, in their four seasons, have finished with 26 wins, 30 draws and 38 losses.
While a review on the ground may be merited, Gheisar stresses that he doesn’t see the need for “drastic measures,” telling reporters, “we just have to have our culture and… [for] every player is committed to the cause – and our cause is to be perfect every day.”
Although Gheisar has never coached in the Canadian Premier League or Major League Soccer, his fingerprints are all over the top levels of the sport in North America. Three of his former charges – Alistair Johnston and Kamal Miller of Montreal CF, and Dayne St. Clair of Minnesota United – are representing Canada at the Men’s World Cup in Qatar. (The ever-rising Johnston is poised to complete a $4.8 million move to Scottish club Celtic FC.) Wanderers striker Ryan Robinson joined the club from the Azzurri in 2022 after a pre-season friendly. And four of Gheisar’s former players have suited up for Wanderers in past seasons: Matthew Arnone, Duran Lee, Alejandro Portal and Tomasz Skublak.
However, there will be pressure surrounding Gheisar’s arrival and whether he can make it to the big leagues. That hasn’t bothered him, he tells The Coast.
“It’s still 11v11, three referees and one ball,” he says. “I’m representing all those other coaches who are waiting to show that you can make a jump from PLSQ, or League1 Ontario, or League1 BC to the CPL… Whenever I’ve started, I’ve always been an underdog. And it’s a story that motivates me and I love it.”
Challenges ahead
Wanderers, for all their fan support, haven’t had much to smile about since 2020.
Gheisar inherits a team in desperate need of firepower. For two consecutive years, the Wanderers have scored the fewest goals (28 and 24) of any CPL club.
This has made it difficult for Wanderers to win games – and to Martin’s chagrin, reach the play-offs. Last season, the gap between seventh-placed Wanderers and fourth-placed Pacific FC, who held the final play-off spot, was 17 points. The return of star striker João Morelli should help Wanderers’ chances, but still, they could use a boost.
Martin told The Coast in October that he expects “around 50%” of the Wanderers’ roster could change this off-season, with a number of player contracts expiring. Now, former leading scorer Akeem Garcia has left the club to pursue a coaching careermidfielder Pierre Lamothe has joined Pacific FC and key midfielder Jérémy Gagnon-Laparé announced he would be leaving the club.
“I wanted to find a leader and I wanted to find a builder.” @WandererDerek announced @patrice421 as the new manager of Wanderers. #CanPL pic.twitter.com/bDwXdIgxUb
— Martin Bauman (@martin_bauman) November 30, 2022
Assistant coach Alex Dorado also announced on Instagram that he would not be returning. telling his followers that it was “the right time for me to look for a new challenge”.
Martin envisions Gheisar using his League1 Ontario connections to bring a pipeline of talent to Nova Scotia.
“There’s no denying, given our location, our geography, we’ve struggled to bring players to Halifax compared to [reigning champion] Forge FC,” says Martin. “No one else has better connections and a better opportunity in that Ontario market to identify those talented players and also recruit them to come out here and join our project.”