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[Team Sport] The Sacking Culture

Nobody love to lose. Either the passionate sport fan who pay thousands of dollars for his season ticket every year, or the player and manager involved in the match, everybody wants to win the match because victory is always the sweetest. But losing is part of any sports. For most sport fans, when their favorite team starts playing badly or losing games, most people will lay the blame on the manager or the coach. “Fire the manager”, “Sack the coach”. A common comment that you will see instantly on social media pages after a lost game.

The theme of calling their manager to quit happened too much on team sports. It is simple. The manager holds the biggest responsibility in making decisions on the field or court. For fans, blaming the lost on one person is the most easiest way to lay the blame on. Anything that doesn’t go right on the field must be the fault of the person who is the decision maker.

In today’s sports culture, with the widespread use of social media, more and more executives are having the same impression as the fans - Fire the person in charge, get a new person to start everything fresh and the problem will be solved.

It is true that some managers are terrible and they deserved to lose their job. But, how often is that the case? There is no definite number on that, but not all coaches are terrible. It takes more than a coach to form a great sports team. Good coaching decision won’t translate into victories if players don’t execute that on the field. Highly experienced coaches won’t be able to win games if they are don’t have talented players in their team. Talented players won’t be able to win championships if they don’t get good coaching.

The sacking culture in team sports is getting worse especially in football. According to ESPN, the English Premier League (EPL) had their highest percentage of coaches replaced per season at 53.8% since 1996. 215 managerial changes happened in the EPL over the past 20 years.

Most shockingly in the 2013-14 season alone, 10 managers left their jobs in the middle of the season. This essential means half of the team in the league (20 teams in total) have a managerial change within a year. Real Madrid, one of the most well-known football clubs in the world, had 8 different managers at helm over the past 10 years.

The reason management are forced to make these sacking decisions are mostly towards the business side of the equation. For instance, football clubs in the European football league system will face the possibility of losing massive revenues if they were relegated to a lower division. This is a reason why sports team in US professional sports league has a relatively low rate of managerial turnover. Some sports league like NBA and NFL even have draft systems that indirectly encouraged teams to play poorly to be able to be at a better positions to draft top talents from college.

The point is it takes more than a person to string a series of poor results. The manager holds the most responsibility in the team’s result. But players should be held to the same responsibility for failing to deliver. The same goes to executives of sports club for failing to hire the right man for the job or attract talented players to the club.

The sacking culture has turned so bad to the point where managers are not well respected. When things are bad, managers were not given enough time to turn things around. For impatient fans, most of the anger and frustration were directed to the managers while in most occasions, executives and players were given a pass on the team’s poor performance.

The culture of sacking managers have turned ascensive in the past 10 years. While on paper, it looks like the most simplest way to turn things around after a bad slump of poor results - Fire the guy, hold the guy responsible for everything, hire a new guy and start everything from fresh. And yes, some clubs do really turned things around in a relatively short amount of time. For example, Chelsea football club went on to win the Champions League and FA Cup two months after firing their manager in the middle of the season in 2012. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Some teams continues to struggle after firing their manager because the biggest problem isn’t with the manager.

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