It was a winter day in Atlanta when Yoann Damet’s phone rang.
The person on the other end of the line? Corey Wray. Wray wasn’t calling to reminisce with a former coworker about the good old days of winning MLS Cup with the Columbus Crew. No, Wray, who had recently been appointed chief soccer officer of St. Louis City, was calling to offer Damet the club’s head coaching position. Six years after becoming the youngest person in MLS history to coach a game — at age 29 as an interim for FC Cincinnati — the Frenchman jumped at the chance for his first permanent managerial gig.
“I could not have wished for a better first opportunity,” Damet told Backheeled.
Respected across the American soccer landscape, Damet’s coaching career began as a 16-year-old and has seen him work alongside MLS Cup-winning managers Wilfried Nancy and Greg Vanney. Now, it’s taken him to St. Louis, a team that was reeling ahead of this season after a pair of fallow years made the team’s West-topping 2023 campaign look more like a blip than a trend. In the midst of last season’s struggles, St. Louis City parted ways with their head coach and sporting director. The club, Damet felt during his interview process, was ready to do things differently.
“There was a wish for a change in terms of the identity and that was pretty much aligned with how I wanted to work and how I wanted to play as well,” he said. “So it started from there, from Corey, from ownership having a vision of a little bit more of what they wanted to look like with the ball, without the ball, keeping also that front-foot mentality, but more so being a little bit clearer on the attacking side.”
For St. Louis, a focus on clarity in both Wray’s squad-building and Damet’s coaching side of the sporting department has led to a historically strong 2026 campaign. In the midst of an MLS record 21-game unbeaten run across all competitions, St. Louis City looks the part of an apex trophy threat. Between next week’s U.S. Open Cup final that will see Damet and Wray return to Columbus and December’s MLS Cup, St. Louis has a chance to earn two pieces of silverware before the year is out.
The extent of St. Louis’ success in Damet’s first season has come as a surprise to many. Even Damet admitted, “You never know how it’s going to go, to be honest.”
And yet? The 36-year-old’s St. Louis City team is catching more eyes than any other in MLS. Here’s how Damet and St. Louis became red-hot.
There’s plenty of overlap between a coach and a salesperson. When you’re interviewing for a job, you have to sell your vision to the powers that be. When you land a job, you have to sell your vision to the players. After all, they’re the ones who actually touch the ball — and many of them do so while making more money than you on the sidelines. The coach, then, has to be convincing if they want a chance to see their vision turn into reality.
“You need to have them buy into the idea,” Damet said.
