Hiring a manager is the most important decision a football club has to make. Not only does it determine how your team performs on the field, but it sets the tone for the entire organization, both inside the building and what it projects to the outside world.
No one expects clubs to always get it correct in the selection of managers. Football clubs are not always known for foresight and clear strategic thinking. But at least we assume they can manage someone. If you’re a huge global brand that can fill stadiums and earn millions in sponsorship deals, how hard can it be to find someone to take a well-paid job as your public face?
And yet the strange reality of top-flight football in 2024 – richer and more powerful than ever – is that clubs are finding it increasingly difficult to appoint the right man. Everywhere they turn they run into dead ends. This is the time of year when teams try to line up the manager or head coach to guide them through the next season and beyond. In theory, this should be a time of creativity and movement, after a long period of relative stagnation in Europe’s biggest sides.
But instead, it looks like the goaltending market is somehow broken. Like the harvest has failed, or the assembly line on the production line has jammed and there are suddenly no new potential head coaches coming through. Teams who thought they could walk into the market and be overwhelmed by a large selection have instead found nothing to suit them.
This strikes us as provocative in a way, at odds with the era of abundant football, with our sense of the big clubs as supermen who simply need to snap their fingers to get what they want.
Just look at the example of Bayern Munich this week.
Since it was decided in February that Thomas Tuchel would leave at the end of the season, they have spoken to Julian Nagelsmann, who Tuchel replaced at Bayern in March last year, only for Nagelsmann to decide to stay with the German national team. Then we talked to Ralf Rangnick, who has decided to stay with the Austrian national team.
Suddenly Bayern, six-time European champions, winners of 11 consecutive Bundesliga titles for this season, are giants by any standard, unsure where to turn next. Even as their side are trying to reach next month’s Champions League final under Tuchel.
Thomas Tuchel has taken Bayern to the Champions League semi-finals but is set to leave the club this summer (Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Or to take another club of similar size: Barcelona.
At the end of January, Xavi announced that this season would be his last as their manager. But there was never any real consensus on who would replace him this summer and the most common name linked to the job was Rafael Marquez, the former Barcelona and Mexico centre-back who has coached Barcelona Athletic, the club’s playing reserve side. in the third division of Spain since July 2022.
It would have been a gamble to say the least as it is his first job in senior management. Club president Joan Laporta always insisted he wanted to convince Xavi to change his mind and stay and late last month Xavi confirmed he would be there next season after all.
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You could point out here that neither Bayern nor Barcelona have been particularly well-run clubs in recent years, and that the center of gravity of European football has been shifted by the broadcasting wealth of the Premier League.
Maybe so, but even in England it doesn’t feel like a star manager is lining up to come and work here this summer. That spell in late 2015 and 2016 when Jurgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola and Antonio Conte all signed with Premier League clubs looks very far away.
Liverpool have had a unique challenge recently to find Klopp’s successor and of course it is impossible to replace a man like him directly. They seem to have gone for Arne Slot, who has impressive results at Feyenoord in the Netherlands and looks to have the right character and approach for the job. But he would not bring the same amount of familiarity that Klopp did nine years ago, having won two Bundesliga titles and the DFB-Pokal (German FA Cup) and also taken Dortmund to the Champions League final in the last five seasons. Slot would arrive at Anfield with much more to prove.
Arne Slot to take charge of Liverpool next season (ANP via Getty Images)
We still don’t know what Manchester United will do about Erik ten Hag, but with his side heading into the Premier League between sixth and eighth, he doesn’t exactly have a compelling case to stay.
And yet the new hierarchy at United will be acutely aware of what a difficult time it is to hire a manager and how few good options there are out there. It is telling that the name they have been linked with the most, Gareth Southgate, the England national team coach, has made a name for himself in the international game rather than at the club level. Similarly, Chelsea will know that if they part ways with Mauricio Pochettino at the end of his first season, they will not replace him with anyone as has been proven.
It is clear that this is about more than just headcount. There is no reason why the number of available managers/head coaches is lower than ever before. There are as many clubs as ever. It’s a group of executives out of work and hasn’t been completely wiped out by the less stressful choice of TV jobs.
What we are really dealing with is not a lack of managers but a lack of them made of managers that elite clubs believe can work for them. It’s not that the shelves are bare, it’s that shoppers don’t like what they see sitting on them. Diligence does not imply deficiency.
In the end, it’s about stratification, with the richest sides playing almost a different sport now than the rest. It used to be that top clubs looked over the landscape and saw dozens of candidates they believed could make the step up to the big time. But now these sides are so elevated from everyone else in the game that they can barely see who’s working down there.
The gap between managing a good team and a super club is now greater than it has ever been. Judging who can take that leap has become one of the most difficult things to do in football. And because the super clubs monopolize trophies in the major leagues, there are far fewer candidates for promotion than ever before.
The fastest way is still after being a player at a big club and Mikel Arteta’s success at Arsenal since his appointment in 2019 will surely inspire the next decade of imitations, just as his mentor Guardiola did at Barcelona 11 years earlier.
(Michael Regan/Getty Images)
That is why the example of Xabi Alonso is so instructive.
By winning the Bundesliga this season, with a possible Europa League treble and Pokal to follow in the coming weeks, he has emphasized that he can rule at the top. The fact that he played for Liverpool, Real Madrid and Bayern for a combined 14 years suggests he would slide straight back into super club life too. If Alonso had left Bayer Leverkusen this summer, he could have solved problems at Bayern or Liverpool for years to come.
But feats like Alonso’s, which used to be more common, are now a once-in-a-generation phenomenon. Maybe in time he will herald the change of guard, but right now there are few Alonso-equivalents to choose from.
The coveted but unavailable Xabi Alonso (Massimo Insabato ATPImages/Getty Images)
When United signed Ten Hag from Ajax in the summer of 2022, it felt like a bold move, a reward for his enterprising style that had won three Eredivisie titles in four years and taken Ajax to the Champions League semi-finals. But his struggle to enforce his style of play at Old Trafford could make other clubs think twice about signing someone with a similar career in the future. That clearly didn’t worry Liverpool, who hope Slot will do better in a similar leap from Dutch football.
Clubs are now thinking about Ruben Amorim, close to winning his second Portuguese championship with Sporting Lisbon in four seasons. In the past, Portugal has been a great place to work in England. Chelsea turned to Porto to recruit Jose Mourinho in 2004 and Andre Villas-Boas seven years later (in both cases following success at European and domestic level). Apart from winning in Europe, there is very little more that Amorim could have done at Sporting, and it remains to be seen what job – if any – he will get this summer.
It is therefore no wonder that the risk-averse elite, who think that even Europe’s best young managers are beneath them, choose to recycle the names that have already proven themselves at that level. Conte won’t be out of a job for much longer. Not even Tuchel, when he’s gone from Bayern.
If you have previously been successful at a big club, you can at least expect a call-up. Because these teams are still in no rush to look down on the masses below them and take a chance.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
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