By Tony Attwood
In league football it’s different. Arsenal joined the Football League to help it secure the League’s position as the definitive national league, rather than as just being a northern variant on the Southern League. That Arsenal were a mid-table side in those early years was neither here nor there. They were serving a function and providing entertainment.
Today, small countries enter the World Cup because it is just that – the World Cup, and they are just that – a small country. So that doesn’t mean they expect to win it. Or at least it is unrealistic for their nation’s President to say that is what they aim to do. Getting through the group stages should be a major achievement worthy of a Presidential medal. Coming bottom of the group stages should not be a source of embarrassment.
But if there is one problem which overarches all other problems with the World Cup it is expectations: the expectations of countries which have never done much in terms of the WC who have suddenly got into the finals, and then are talked up at home by their national president who knows bugger all about world football but claims his country are going to be likely winners.
It is a bit like Giggleswick Barnstormers suddenly getting through to the 1st round of the FA Cup having never made it past the Preliminary rounds before, and then instead of celebrating that great achievement they start talking about winning the trophy, with debates about how the ticket allocation for the final at Wembley will be handled.
And then on finding themselves being beaten 5-1 by a Division Two team, instead of taking the plaudits for having got to the competition proper for the first time ever, they hound out the manager as an embarrassment and say it is time to rebuild the squad.
Thus a great chance to celebrate what the club has achieved is lost as players who have been doing a great job, far from being rewarded and thanked, are kicked out as failures, a new manager is brought in, and the club goes back to where it was five years ago.
This is short-termism gone mad, yet we have all seen managers, coaches and thoroughly decent players being raised to a level far beyond their actual capability and then knocked off a perch that they had never sought to be sitting on in the first place.
So out goes the manager, in comes a new man and we go round and round, and instead of building on the achievement of getting to the first round proper, the club sinks back to being knocked out in the Preliminary Round.
It is indeed hard to find many clubs where the owner and his nominee top man have remained in post while the club has gradually climbed up the rankings. (Arsenal did it with Chapman, but then the board kicked out their chairman who brought Chap,man to the club, as they couldn’t deal with the fact that he had indeed done what he said he would – win the league).
And this sort of thing happens with clubs in all leagues and cup competitions. Arsenal with their rise from two years finishing eighth and then fifth, before three years in second place, then finally making it to the top, without changing managers along the way.
Today, for most clubs, sacking the manager and his team of buddies who really exceeded everyone’s expectations becomes the norm, and we get so used to it we hardly bother to notice. And it is the same with country teams as it is with league teams – no time is allowed for gradual developments, but a slip down just once and the manager gets the boot. It happens all over the world, and can be quite funny (when it happens to Tottenham).
Jusst as it was rather interesting to follow the case of Sami Trabelsi, who was sacked by Tunisia after they lost of Mali in the Africa Cup of Nations, having already lost to Tunisia at the start of the competition.
But why sack the manager mid-contest? Ah, that turned out to be a telling question because the answer was, “We have our pride. We need to react.” In short, if a manager who has not met crazy expectations is not sacked, then the directors are humiliated, and that will never do.
As a result, some managers don’t even make it through the first month. Tunisia sacked their coach after losing their first game in the current World Cup round, and then the next manager resigned 18 days later before he could get the chop.
This sort of dismissal goes on in the World Cup finals of course – the group stages are only three games long, and if the local media have promoted your country as potential winners, then if you don’t get out of the group that’s that.
Of course, the managers often don’t help, making speeches talking about coming to the WC to win the WC and so resigning after three games in the group stages. Some people just get nasty, as the president of South Korea said of the country’s manager, that “If an incapable person is appointed as a leader, the outcome is as predictable as fire.”
So now everyone demands success. Czechia, in the first World Cup finals in 20 years, finished bottom of their group, and sacked the manager. He blamed the media. That seems a pretty regular sort of routine.
And this is what we see over and over again – ludicrous expectations from countries that have actually done well to get into finals in the first place, are then talked up by local politicians bathing in that reflected glory, and then finding they were never at that level in the first place.
In fact, what we are actually seeing is good managers who achieve extraordinary results (take Steve Clarke getting Scotland to three major tournaments, and then walking away because Scotland were not among the eight best third-placed teams). At least he could feel happy about the link between the players and the fans.
The fact is that World Cups are played between completely unbalanced sides from countries of massively different sizes, with ludicrously different levels of interest in football.
The problem is one can’t become the manager of a country’s team and start by saying “we’re a little country so we probably won’t win anything.” A medium-sized country can ditch its old guard and play lots of younger players, but if it doesn’t work at once, the media will go bonkers. Mind you, some still retain their dignity. Marcelo Bielsa left the Uruguay job saying, “I have not left anything to Uruguayan football.”
But the point is, presidents of countries often have ludicrous expectations and promise the moon, and occasionally it can work, as when Croatia’s Zlatko Dalic took Croatia to the World Cup final in 2018 and the semis in 2022. The longest-serving coach of Croatia, he stepped down as his contract expired.
The Croatian federation replied: “Thank you for everything – the victories, the achievements, the qualifying berths, the medals, the unity, the respect, and your unwavering commitment to fight for Croatia.”
Now that is style.
