Managing The Managers
Fire Away!
W. R. McCowan
IF YOU HAD ASKED TEN-YEAR-OLD ME what I wanted to do when I grew up, you would have been listening for a while. I would work hard, I would climb the ranks, and I would begin to create connections with the people who I needed to know. But little would they know, they were just a pedestal, a door, a part of my masterplan… to become a world-renowned manager in professional football.
Until I took the tiniest glance into the real world of soccer.
Gaffers are getting the boot without a moment’s hesitation. The statistics say all that needs be said to steer ten-year-old me away from my managerial dreams. The rate at which managers are fired is ferocious, and the skyward burst looks only set to continue. In the Spanish LaLiga last year, more than three-quarters of the league’s managers were fired! At this point, one must take a step back and question whether the utter bedlam is good for the game. Is scape-goating the manager always the right approach?
As football manager Howard Wilkinson put it, “There are only two types of managers – those who have been sacked and those who will be sacked in the future.” There is a long and undistinguished list of managers who have lasted fewer than one hundred days, with Paul Sturrock’s dismissal by Southampton after just nine days marking rock bottom.
This leads me to ask: does a leader really perform his best under this immense pressure?
To some degree, the constant threat of losing your job can be an effective motivator that spurs you on. But I think the current approach is a step too far. In the football world, every move you make is monitored by the press, your owners, your fans and even your players – and every setback could be the death of a managerial career. How you train your players, how you motivate your players, how you take the risks that are essential to top-level success, and the list goes on. I wonder how these people cope. Their future is dangerous and uncertain, with the constant threat of having to uproot their family and move to a country across the continent or around the world to another new side with the hope of renewed success.
They could lose their homes, their money, their friends, their hopes, their dreams.
And all for what?
The doubters and haters aren’t only on the outside, they’re often inside the club as well. Managers must maintain a flawless relationship with their players – and especially their superstars – who they see every day. This almost-impossible bond is crucial, to have a dressing room that is not beset by grudges and in-fighting, so that the team can play as one in the game ahead. A manager cannot say anything, certainly not publicly but likely privately too, that risks their relationship with a player – otherwise they are out the door before you can say Jack Robertson.
Thomas Tuchel, who was sacked by Chelsea in December 2023
So, let’s run this one more time.
Reflecting on the life of a football manager, I tell myself to abandon my ambition to follow this path. It may be much better to settle down and work hard to be able to live in Australia – in a job with just a little more security and support.
If people listened to my advice of the head, professional football would struggle to attract dreamers like ten-year-old me, aspiring to be in control of a club. Yet I expect it’s the dreamers who think with their hearts who the game really needs. Those audacious souls who dare to think they can do it better and are prepared to risk their lives being torn apart after a few tough Saturdays.
Football would be better off if the game’s powerbrokers creating this carnage took a step back and showed just a little more patience. And as the managers might say:
“Let us cook!”