Seeing what first-year head coach Brad Friedel is tackling with the New England Revolution brought an entirely new perspective on Giovanni Savarese’s challenges. The rookie Portland Timbers boss came into a team that had experienced success, had expectations of themselves, and harbored ideas about the best way to meet them. That culture has presented a unique set of obstacles and benefits for an incoming boss, but at least there was something to build on.
Friedel is having to seed all that on his own. The degree to which he’s been successful is open to debate and won’t be clear for some time, but in the magnitude and scope of the tasks, his job is less similar to Savarese’s than another first-year MLS boss: Colorado Rapids head coach Anthony Hudson.