Since New Year, three of the world’s most famous football clubs — Chelsea, Manchester United and Real Madrid — have sacked their head coach. This is normal for the industry: the average tenure of head coaches across Europe is now about 1.2 years, with most serving less than a season. The sackings illustrate football’s dysfunctionality. They also highlight the passing of football’s “big man” era. If clubs, fans and coaches themselves can adjust to this shift, that may be no bad thing.
The football manager was once a giant figure. He — and so far, it is always a he in the top leagues — used to run the entire club, overseeing everything from selection to transfers. Manchester United’s Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger at Arsenal were the last omnipotent total managers. Today, no major club has one. As football’s revenues have soared from the 1990s onwards, clubs’ organisations mushroomed. Now power is shared among multiple executives. The “manager”, as he’s still often called, has shrunk into a head coach, who only oversees the first team.
At big clubs, the head coach supervises a vast staff of video and data analysts, set-piece coaches, psychologists and others, whose contributions are often crucial yet unseen by outsiders. The head coach still creates the illusion of all-powerful master of the show, since he is the club’s figurehead, and its face at press conferences. In fact, to use a corporate analogy, he is more departmental head than chief executive.