“I’m going to give you some good advice, Brian Clough. No matter how good you think you are, or how clever, or how many fancy new friends you make on the telly, the reality of footballing life is this. The chairman is the boss, then come the directors, then the secretary, then the fans, then the players, and finally, last of all, bottom-of-the- heap, lowest of the low, the one in the end we can all do without, is the bloody manager.”
Fictional words from a very real man, Sam Longson’s shot across the bows of Brian Clough in The Damned United have rarely rung as true as they do in 2026. Is it too much to speculate whether a near 100 year experiment in the cult of personality is at an end? Whether, in the raft of firings to start 2026, we have not just seen the long prophesied death of the manager as a solo headline act at a club, but the ending of the idea that the guy who coaches and picks the team might be the most important in the club?
What is certainly true is that their status at the highest level clubs has never seemed more precarious. Begin your tenure amidst an unfortunate run of off finishing? That’s a sacking. Try to carve out authority for yourself amid countless executives? That’s a sacking. Hold firm to the tactical identity that got you the job? That’s a sacking. Cave to the demands of your players and watch performances suffer as a result? You best believe that’s a sacking.
It seems that there is nothing head coaches can do to liberate themselves from pressure on all sides. Take Xabi Alonso, as a smart club doubtless will now that he has entered the coaching pool. He returned to the Santiago Bernabeu not only as the sort of legendary former player, La Decima for starters, who deserved respect for his playing career, but as one of the sport’s outstanding coaches. His strength of will and vision had shaped Bayer Leverkusen into an elite European outfit. He had nothing to prove.
Such coaches do still flop. Alonso didn’t. Having got his feet under the desk at the Club World Cup, the 44-year-old proceeded to forge Real Madrid into probably the best team in Europe for the first few months of the season. Kylian Mbappe was the best he has ever been and it was clear that the press and possess style established in the Bundesliga could translate to one of the biggest teams in the world. At least it could in terms of results, some weirdness against Atletico Madrid notwithstanding.
The system, though, did not bring the best out of all the superstars. A bust up with Vinicius Junior preceeded a radical reinvention, at least for Alonso. Within days Madrid were back to big vibe energy, Mbappe and Vinicius vaguely wondering around the attacking half at Anfield, waiting for someone else to win the ball back, magically progress it through midfield and get it to them in their spots.
It may not surprise you to learn that results significantly deteriorated. The expected goal difference largely trended downwards too. If you trace the breaking point to the Clasico, in which Madrid battered Barcelona, you find a team who went from 12-0-1 to 8-3-4. Alonso compromised his vision amid an onslaught of criticism. It barely even bought him time.
Perhaps he could have stood firm to the last. After all, his Madrid played the football Alonso was hired to play. Ruben Amorim tried that. On day one he was saying “there is no second way.” The Pope himself couldn’t change his tactical approach (well except that one game against Wolves that looked an aberration even as it was going on). The football world knew this. Amorim’s didacticism had cost him the Liverpool job. And yet it was for that very reason, just as performances and xG were starting to hint that his players were grasping the 3-4-2-1, that he found himself drummed out of Old Trafford. Well that and some choice words for those above him.
Clough could attest that those outbursts will have you teetering on the brink whatever era you’re managing in, but until recently the war of words between chairman and manager seemed a relic of the pre-Premier League era. Amorim following Enzo Maresca in fighting his battles in public might just be a coincidence, or it might be a sign of what is to come as coaches struggle to carve out a role for themselves. Maresca was said to have chafed against the impositions not only of the sizeable recruitment division but also the impositions of a medical department on his selection policy.
In the 2026 Premier League such demands feel extreme. Will they in the future? American investors see the management structures of the clubs they are buying as antiquated, too much power invested in the transient figures in the dugout. Enough of them have seen the damage wrought by GM-coaches on their franchises. There is, after all, a compelling logic to separating the immediate need for results from the longer term questions of a player’s fitness or the future needs of a team at left wing. If a coach’s success and failure is going to be defined by immediate results, are they not most effectively empowered by instructing them to focus solely on what is in front of them?
Maresca’s successor seemed to acknowledge as much on Monday. “I’d love to be here for six years or longer,” said Liam Rosenior. “I’d be here as long as possible. But I’m aware in order for that to happen, I need to win. It’s as simple as that.”
What space, though, for those who don’t win immediately because they have a vision for how best to win in the future? Mikel Arteta didn’t arrive at Arsenal in 2019 because they needed a quick upturn in results. His motivation was to “transform the club”. Doing so meant bottoming out with an awful lot of turgid football. The transformation might not even be over yet. Arsenal have been rewarded not only for their patience but for their empowering of Arteta and his coaching staff, whose talent assessments have been backed in recruitment, player retention and almost any other aspect of Arsenal you care to mention.
That matters because however much of his authority is chipped away at, the head coach will still have to be the face of the club. Even in Germany and Italy, where sporting directors might have to explain themselves, the timbre around the organisation is set by the man in the dugout. He is the man who defines the story of the present and indeed paints a picture of the future. When that works — not only in Arteta’s case but the symbiosis of Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool, the ferocious intensity of Antonio Conte and Juventus or of course the charm of Clough in Derby and Nottingham — the momentum is irresistible.
The suits in the front office would do well to bear that in mind. Those who might share a view that the manager is the lowest of the low should consider how high clubs can rise when they appoint the right one.
