Your Saturday Kickoff: Can Seattle make it a rivalry again with the Timbers?

Add another manager to the pile. Inter Miami are the latest team to try and get the new manager bounce. Phil Neville is out and a brand new era of… something begins. It’s frankly going to have to be a heckuva new manager bounce to make up for the roster in place. Even more so with Jean Mota and Gregore still out long-term. Like, truly special. I don’t know who can come in and fix this right now. Inter Miami’s chief soccer officer and sporting director, Chris Henderson, seems to think that someone can come in though and make the team… better at… finishing… or something?

“We’ve had some injuries that have affected results, but we have a competitive team, we have a team good enough to be winning these games. There’s top players up top that need to be finishing goals,” Henderson said.

“ … The staff, the front office, the players, the coaches and players have to give a little bit more and be a little more clinical. If you look at our results, many 1-0 losses. I would say all but two, so we’re in these games. But when we get chances we have to finish.”

That’s an answer that, to be very frank again, only makes sense if you have a manager lined up that you really, really want in and you needed an excuse to move on from the current guy. No MLS manager is overcoming your two best midfielders and two of your best players by a significant amount going down long term. They’re just not.

Anyway, I’ll digress a bit and say today is a day for checking in on all the “new manager bounces.” Inter Miami take on a good D.C. United team. New York host Orlando. And Chicago go to, of all places, FC Cincinnati. There are some big, big asks for the interims today. We’ll be a few games in from Chicago and New York’s coaching changes and should be at a point where we can start to assess what, if anything has actually changed. Inter Miami get to begin that journey today. And other teams may be looking to begin that journey soon if results continue the way they’ve been. Nick Cushing at NYCFC, Robin Fraser at Colorado and Bob Bradley at Toronto all have a little extra to play for today. Should be fun?