The six hardest manager jobs in world football as Real Madrid dressing room explodes | OneFootball

The lifespan of a manager can be short at the best of times but a potent mix of expectation, diva players and trigger-happy boards can make some clubs a very difficult place to be.

As the latest Real Madrid drama plays out, we’ve taken a look at the six hardest manager jobs to keep hold of right now.

England

“It’s coming home” may be a self-deprecating slogan that appears every time an international tournament is on, but it speaks of the weight of expectation that is on the shoulders of any England manager.

Put simply, anything less than winning the World Cup is seen as a failure for the inventors of the sport and one that has gone 60 years without success – on the men’s side at least.

It is the national sport of the country and so when a tournament comes around, 60 million people suddenly become experts and don’t want to hear arguments such as “well actually Spain’s youth system has been set up in a way to generate technical skill while England’s tends to lump it to the big man”.

Gareth Southgate came close and removed the stormy cloud of negativity that hung over his predecessors but as an outsider, the knives will be out for Thomas Tuchel at the first sign of a misstep.

Manchester United

It’s been 13 years since Sir Alex Ferguson announced his retirement from Manchester United and yet his presence still hangs over Old Trafford as a reminder for anyone in the dugout of what came before.

Fergie set an impossibly high bar and even after he left, the expectation was that Manchester United should remain at that level. The reality is they have been far from it.

The task for any of the numerous managers they have tried has not been easy. For a start there is the Glazer family who, while not only bleeding the club for money, appointed people like Ed Woodward who seemed completely out of his depth.

Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS is there now but they too have made some bizarre decisions that do not promote success.

Ruben Amorim’s humility was at odds with the all-conquering attitude of United and while Michael Carrick has steadied the ship, he has done so while playing in just one competition.

Next season, whether it is Carrick or someone else, the expectation will be to fight in all four competitions but it has not been a club built for that for some time.

Barcelona

It’s not enough just to win as manager of Barcelona, you have to do it the right way.

The Cruyff style has become the de facto rulebook for any Barcelona boss. Such is that belief that in the year Luis Enrique masterminded a treble, there was talk in January that he could be sacked for being too direct.

As with their Madrid rivals, one of the biggest challenges is the Spanish press which makes the English one look friendly but Hansi Flick also has to deal with an elected board and president who are looking for re-election as much as they are team success.

There is also the matter of €3.5 billion in debt after some horrendous mismanagement from Josep Maria Bartomeu. It is unsurprising then that Barcelona only spent €25m last summer.

So Flick must face incredible pressure both within and outside the club while not being able to spend the kind of cash that Premier League clubs lose down the back of the sofa. Oh and if you play the wrong kind of football, you’re out.

PSG

Luis Enrique may have cracked it but that does not make managing Paris Saint-Germain an easy gig.

The biggest difficulty with managing the French outfit is that success is only ever one thing – winning everything.

If Arsenal win the Premier League but lose the Champions League final, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone calling it a bad season. If PSG win Ligue 1 but not the Champions League, it is a disaster.

The expectation is so high and while you are fortunate to have a near-unlimited transfer budget, that comes with the weight of expectation to be the best manager in the world.

Chelsea

The problem with being Chelsea manager, it seems, is you are not actually allowed to do much managing.

Agreeing to the head coach position at Chelsea means agreeing to unlimited BlueCo interference. The American investment fund dictates that the medical team will have a say, something that pushed Enzo Maresca to the point of leaving the club. They will say who will be signed and who will be sold and they will create a squad more focused on generating profit than winning trophies.

This could work at a mid-table Premier League club but the recent history of Chelsea has meant there is an expectation of winning major competitions and anything but is seen as a failure.

So a head coach is met with the unworkable mix of an inexperienced squad, an overly involved board and a ridiculously high bar. Good luck.

Real Madrid

Other clubs may come and go but Real Madrid remains the most impossible of managerial jobs.

In its current iteration, Madrid is as much a soap opera as it ever was but the ability to still somehow simultaneously win trophies has left them.

Facing the next manager is a dressing room that is literally fighting each other. You have Kylian Mbappe, an extremely talented footballer but one that seems to not fit in a Champions League-winning side. You may have Vinicius Junior, one who believes he is the best player to ever kick a ball and does not want to hear otherwise. Even the players that put a shift in like Fede Valverde are too busy fighting their team-mates.

All the while you have the expectation that anything less than the Champions League is failure and even then, that may not be enough if you dare to lose the Liga title to Barcelona.

It’s an incredibly tough job and one seemingly only fit for a very small handful of managers.