Welcome, everybody to soccer 101. My name is Taylor Rockwell, and I am still the host for this week.

But if it doesn't go well,

Graham Ruffin is waiting in the wings to take over, see out the rest of the podcast season.

Graham, are you ready to take on the role of interim podcast manager?

Hello, Taylor Rockwell. Yeah, I am ready to take on that role. I'm looking forward to talking

about interim managers today because I can sympathize with people

in the position because basically every line of work I have ever had in my life has come from some

form of interim position and then they just don't know how to get rid of me. So I am the goose

hidden of the blogging and podcasting world, I think. I think that just means you're good at it or they're very apathetic, but more likely

is that you're very good at what you do. And we will talk about very good interim managers. We'll also talk about the opposite of that. But first, we should define what we're talking about, Graham. For those unfamiliar with the idea, what is an interim manager? Yeah, so an interim manager, as the name suggests, is a manager who is only in place on a temporary basis.

It's not their job permanently.

The club or national team or whatever is still looking for the person they want in charge in the long term.

So an interim manager is a stopgap solution.

Yeah.

And you're usually going to have that when obviously a manager has been sacked,

mid-season usually, and you don't have the replacement lined up right away.

But you might also get it if a manager departs for either another club gig or maybe an international gig,

and you need to sort of find somebody not necessarily on the fly,

but as you said, you want that time to make sure you get the appointment right. So you bring in

somebody who has familiarity with the club in one way or another. Yeah, I think that's right. And that's

one of the categories that I've got down as a reason why a team might opt for an interim manager,

essentially just planning

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