Cyle Larin and Liam Millar will both be looking to keep up their respective teams’ promotion hopes in the Championship, while CF Montreal turns the page yet again after another change on the touchline.
Here are three storylines to watch in Canadian soccer this weekend.
CF Montreal (vs. Red Bull New York, Saturday at 2:30 p.m. ET/11:30 a.m. PT)
Normally the aim of this feature is to highlight Canadian players who are playing in big weekend matches. With the FIFA World Cup only two months away, special attention is to be paid to players who will likely be on the men’s national team or fighting tooth and nail for a spot in the squad. And that will still come later in the piece, but to start, a look at a whole team and the extraordinary circumstances they find themselves in – well, no, that’s not quite right. They would be extraordinary circumstances for most teams. For this one, though, it’s something far too common.
After six matches on the road to start the 2026 Major League Soccer season, CF Montreal returns to Stade Saputo on Saturday for its home opener against Red Bull New York and, while the air might no longer be frosty, the reception from the fans just might be.
On Sunday, CFMTL fired manager Marco Donadel after a 1-5 start to the campaign. A change of manager this early in the season would normally raise the dander of any fan base, but for CF Montreal’s it’s different. Donadel is the fourth manager to be fired in five years by CFMTL. Since entering MLS in 2011, the club has now gone through 11 different managers. None of those 11 men made it to the 100-game mark. The churn seems to be a never-ending cycle for a team that has only made the playoffs on six occasions.
Sporting director Luca Saputo insists that a plan is still in place and this wasn’t a hasty decision.
“It was not an easy decision, but we had outlined specific goals at the end of last season relating to style of play and player progression, and we saw very quickly that those objectives were not being met,” Saputo said.
In Donadel’s stead, assistant manager Philippe Eullaffroy takes over on interim basis. A native of Troyes, France, Eullaffroy rejoined the club ahead of this season. He previously served as an assistant manager with the senior team in 2013 and 2014 and had a decade-long association with the CFMTL academy.
Eullaffroy preached consistency in his first availability as manager.
“From a tactical philosophy, I’m not going to reinvent the wheel,” Eullaffroy said. “What I want is a very dynamic team, playing with a lot of intensity, boldness and respect for the gameplan. So, what I want for our first intention is to play forward – to pass or drive into space. We want a very proactive team with a lot of intensity, playing to win and playing mostly with the same style of play every game.”
Eullaffroy is undoubtedly saying the right things as he’s thrust into the same situation that many of his predecessors found untenable. An argument can be made that was no fault of their own in a lot of these cases. Donadel, for example, was made interim head coach after the firing of Laurent Courtois last March after an 0-5 run to start the season. The former Fiorentina midfielder would go on to lead the team to just six wins over the rest of the campaign. There was nothing demonstrated by Donadel to indicate this arrangement should continue past 2025, and yet he was made permanent boss. It certainly did not take an additional six games to see that.
Eullafrroy’s reign with CF Montreal’s seemingly poisoned chalice begins against RBNY, who are also under a first-time head coach in Toronto FC legend Michael Bradley. Through six games, Red Bull sits on 11 points, seventh in the East. Bradley’s first loss as manager came back on March 8 when RBNY was defeated 3-0 by none other than CF Montreal.
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Cyle Larin, Southampton (vs. Swansea City, Saturday at 10 a.m. ET/7 a.m. PT)
There might not be a hotter team in England right now than Tonda Eckert’s Southampton.
Heading into Saturday’s visit from Swansea City at St. Mary’s, Saints are winners of seven straight games and have an eight-point cushion on a playoff spot in fourth place in the table. But with four matches remaining in the Championship season, Southampton is aiming for something even greater. Saints now trail Ipswich Town by only three points for automatic promotion. Sure, it’s still improbable, but only a couple of months ago all of this seemed closer to impossible.
On Feb. 2, Saints sold leading scorer Adam Armstrong to Wolves. He had 11 goals in the league at that point. Fighting for Premier League survival with Wolves looked more appealing to the veteran striker than wallowing in midtable obscurity in the Championship. Southampton sat 14th in the table, seven points out of the top six and only eight points clear of the drop.
Since that point, Southampton has not lost a match. In fact, they’ve drawn only two of those 15 matches, winning the rest. On top of their assault up the Championship table, Saints find themselves in the FA Cup semis with a date with Manchester City on the horizon. To reach the last four, Southampton dispatched Premier League leaders Arsenal in the quarters. Saints seek their first FA Cup since 1976 and only their second in history.
Saints’ change in fortune coincides with the arrival of Brampton, Ont.’s Cyle Larin, a man also experiencing personal resurgence. The 30-year-old Larin began the season on loan at Feyenoord from Mallorca where he struggled for game time. The prospect of missing out on Jesse Marsch’s Canada squad was turning into a real possibility if he didn’t find a way to see the pitch more frequently.
He’s done just that at Saints. Since arriving in England on Feb. 2, the same day that Armstrong left, Larin has five goals and an assist in 12 league matches. He found the scoresheet again in Tuesday’s 3-0 win over Blackburn Rovers.
Larin has become so crucial to Saints that the team is already looking to turn his loan into a permanent, Spanish outlet Cadena SER reported this week. While Larin’s loan does have a buy option, Mallorca could play hardball with the player. The purchase option is a modest £3.4 million. Should Larin help Saints achieve promotion and then play well at the World Cup, Mallorca would certainly expect the UConn product to command more on the market.
Also worth noting in the Cadena SER report is that Larin is not expected back at Mallorca, currently 15th in La Liga and two points clear of the relegation zone with seven matches remaining, under any circumstances.
Southampton’s push for a return to the Prem continues with a visit from Swansea City. The Swans are playing out the string. The Welsh side are 14th in the table, 13 points back of the playoff places, but also well clear of relegation worries, sitting 13 points above Oxford United in 22nd.
Perhaps the biggest thing left to play for this season for Swans is a Golden Boot. Slovenia forward Zan Vipotnik leads all Championship scorers with 21 goals this season. He has five more goals than Coventry City’s United States forward Haji Wright, who is in second.
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Liam Millar, Hull City (vs. Birmingham City, Saturday at 10 a.m. ET/7 a.m. PT)
Hull City’s history in the top flight of English football isn’t a lengthy one. Now in their 122nd season of competition, just five of them have come at the apex of the football pyramid. The Tigers reached the Premier League in 2008, marking the first time they’d played in the top flight. Since then, they’ve appeared in the Premier League four more times with no stay lasting longer than two years. Their last trip to the Prem was a one-and-done in 2016-2017.
With four matches remaining in the Championship season, the Tigers – this time featuring Toronto’s Liam Millar in its midfield – has the chance to once again earn a shot at the Premier League. Sergej Jakirovic’s side is holding onto sixth place in the table and the final playoff on 68 points, four points clear of seventh-place Wrexham.
Beginning with Saturday’s visit from Birmingham City, all of Hull’s remaining games come against teams in the midtable or lower. They will be the favourite in all four of those games, but that’s no guarantee they will get the job done.
Since the close of the transfer window, Hull’s form has been wildly inconsistent. The team has won just four games of 14 across all competitions and has had two multi-game losing streaks during this period. Hull is currently winless in three and its last win came against bottom-of-table Sheffield Wednesday on Mar. 21. Most recently, the team slumped to a 2-1 defeat to Sheffield United last Saturday. Millar set up Oli McBurnie for the Tigers’ lone goal.
Despite the slump in play, McBurnie says the team is still right where they want to be.
“I think if you ask any fan or any player at the start of the season if we would be in this position with four games to go, they would have snapped your hands off, so it is down to us,” McBurnie said. “Four games to go and our fate is in our own hands, and we know what we need to do to be in the position we want to be in.”
The season has been an especially important one for the 26-year-old Millar. After tearing his ACL in the fall of 2024, the Liverpool academy product made his return to action after 11 months out and picked up where he left off for both club and country. In 29 league appearances this season, Millar has two goals and four assists.
League One winners in 2025, Brummie are sticking around in the Championship next season. Birmingham City has a 12-point cushion on the relegation zone, so they will be out to play spoiler against Hull just as they did last week against Wrexham. A 2-0 win over Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s team was a brutal body blow to Wrexham’s playoff hopes, making the chances of a remarkable four promotions in four seasons considerably more unlikely.
