Often of course, a manager is never officially sacked. They leave posts “by mutual consent”, effectively taking a nice pay-off in return for their silence. I have Manchester City supporting friends who still to this day maintain that Sven Goran Eriksson was not sacked by Thaksin Shinawatra – after all, he left by mutual consent. He has spoken since about his dismay at being dismissed.
And the financial side means that few top managers are left on the scrapheap. Nice payoffs and gardening leave mean the mortgage on that beach-front mansion is taken care off, and there’s always the opportunity of some media work whilst they consider their next move.
Nowadays, megalomaniac club owners are as common as Alex Ferguson media blackouts. Is it really damaging to be relieved of your job by a man who thinks he could run the first team himself (like Dmitry Pietrman did at Racing Santander), wants his son playing up front or thinks it might be a good idea to hire a female player (see Luciano Gaucci at Perugia)? And if you play in a stadium whose name is also the name of the owner, don’t worry, you’ll be fine if he sacks you (Mr Madejski, I’ll leave you out of this).
If your owner is really mental, you could be sacked and back in the job pretty quickly anyway. A couple of weeks ago, Palermo president Maurizio Zamparini sacked Serse Cosmi after a run of poor results – Cosmi was only appointed at the end of February. His replacement is Delio Rossi – the man who preceded Cosmi. Stan Flashman sacked and re-hired Barry Fry eight times at Barnet, and this excludes Fry’s first managerial stint at the club.
Sometimes, if not most of the time, the fans do not help. If Manchester City can learn one thing from their history, it is that changing managers every year achieves little. And yet recently there were still those that thought that Mancini should go, and City should get someone else in, and start the rebuilding cycle all over again, until he has a bad month and then people will want him to go, and on and on, and on. And it is this culture of replacing anyone who doesn’t succeed from the off that produces a merry-go-round but which also lines the pockets of many a manager.
Afterall, modern-day football waits around for no one. Owners and fans demand instant success, instant results. A bad two weeks is all it takes for mumblings of discontent about a manager and rumours in the press about the owner looking for a replacement. Every manager has had 3 games to save his job, as if someone’s entire ability can be judged from a fortnight of results. Rare is the Alex Ferguson or the Arsene Wenger that stays at one club, for many a year. Abroad it’s even worse. Jesus Gil at Atletico Madrid got through as many coaches as Manchester United and Liverpool have ever had combined. Real Madrid have sacked a league winning coach. No one is safe. But it does them little harm, because there’ll almost always be another owner waiting in the wings to give them another chance, and the endless cycle continues.
The article was written by Howard Hockin for FootballFancast.com. Make sure to check out the latest news, blogs and podcasts at FFC – ed.
Follow us on twitter @live4Liverpool or like us on Facebook
Live4Liverpool is recruiting columnists. For further info contact the site editor at live4liverpool@snack-media.com
This week it is LFC fan and tennis player Caroline Wozniacki!
1 comment-
Pingback: free classifide ads
Comments are closed.