Every follower of the round leather game would agree that the game is now competitive more than it has ever been, and while the competition in the game would only get tougher, every club would go to any length to sustain their relevance in the class of top football clubs even if they have to hire and fire managers.
Over the years, excretable performances from top football clubs have engendered sack for decent and top managers in the football world. And it’s somehow bizarre that till date, most of them are jobless.
With the 2020/2021 season underway, these managers may remain clubless unless something happens.
Below are the top managers who are currently without a job.
- Massimiliano Allegri (Italy) – Last Club Managed: Juventus (2019)
Given that football could be cruel at times, Max Allegri was relieved of his duties at Juve for perhaps the most ridiculous reason. His inability to play fancy football with the Old Ladies got him axed by the Juve hierarchy.
Upon his arrival at the Bianconerri in 2014, Allegri being an intelligent tactician was able to build effectively on Antonio Conte’s successful tactics and winning mentality.
Unlike Antonio Conte who would usually set up in an abrasive manner, Allegri’s Juve side became slightly less rough and intense in their pressing off the ball.
While their playing style focused on making use of the ball the most, exploring their opponent aerially, and gaining a territorial advantage in order to conserve energy.
Allegri’s five years stay at Juve begat 5 SerieA titles for the Turin giants, 4 Coppa Italia, 2 Super Coppa Italia titles as well as 2 silver medals from the UEFA Champions League having emerged runner-up on two occasions (2015 & 2017).
The former AC Milan boss has been on the lookout for a new club to manage since last year, hoping to land a job with some of the elite clubs in Europe.
- Mauricio Pochettino (Argentina) – Last Club Managed: Tottenham Hotspur (2019)
Pochettino has been turning the page right from his days at Espanyol to when he had the opportunity of managing Southampton up until when he got his last job at Spurs.
The Argentine kick-started his managerial career at Espanyol in 2009, impressing the club with a scintillating performance to ensure the club didn’t relegate into the Spanish Segunda Division.
In spite of that, his contract was terminated on mutual consent by Espanyol in 2012. Two months thereafter, Pochettino landed at St Mary’s Stadium to begin his reign as Southampton boss.
His stint with the Saints was a laudable one. In his first full season in English Football, Southampton while recording their highest points tally since 1992/1993, ended the season as the eighth-placed team which was their highest league position since 2002/2003.
His exploits caught the attention of Tottenham chairman (Daniel Levy) and were snatched from the Saints in 2014 just after a year. He led Spurs to top-three finishes in three of his first four seasons.
As well as leading the North Londoners to the Champions League final for the first time in the club’s history in 2019 which they lost to Liverpool by 2 goals to nothing.
READ ALSO: Mauricio Pochettino’s Trajectory & Next Destination
Pochettino’s focus as a manager is to develop young players from the clubs’ youth academies and his willingness to promote them, a very high-pressing attacking style of football and his astute man-management guidance and approach.
These attributes have really made name for the Argentine tactician and it could only get better.
After his sack at Tottenham last November, Pochettino has been linked with top jobs in England and Europe and it’s quite sure that his next job would be the biggest in his career as a manager so far.
- Ernesto Valverde (Spain) – Last Club Managed: Barcelona (2020)
Barcelona’s movement towards the stage of bedlam in the past nine months is connected with the mysterious sacking of Ernesto Valverde.
The former Athletic Bilbao boss was axed by Barcelona having won the league in the two full seasons he spent at Camp Nou, losing only two of the 28 games he managed in the UEFA Champions League, he also won a Copa Del Rey title and lost another final of the competition to Valencia and his Barca side was topping the table as of when he was sacked.
On the premise of these records in just two years, the decision to have him sacked was truly a farcical one.
Valverde was accused of playing “mechanic football” which was in contradiction to the club’s tikitaka style of play. The board and a certain set of Barca fans believed that Valverde’s mechanical style of play couldn’t land the club their most coveted title hunt, the UEFA Champions League.
But the bitter truth these fans and the board failed to accept is that in Valverde’s two-year tenure at the club, Barcelona were consistent league winners and if given time, they would’ve won the Champions League.
He was sacked on January 13, 2020, after losing to Atlético Madrid in the Supercopa de España by 3 goals to 2. He’s since January been resting and definitely would be anticipating another big job.
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- Maurizio Sarri (Italy) – Last Club Managed: Juventus (2020)
Sarri might not have played professional football, but his philosophy is a beautiful one, quite intelligent, and plays an attractive, exciting, and attacking-minded brand of football – he’s just been unlucky as a manager.
He’s had a tepid experience as a manager after kick-starting his managerial career quite early than most managers (1990). But when he won promotion to Serie A in 2014 with Empoli and preserving their place in the Italian top-flight league, he was hired by Napoli. And every of his performance since then has been noteworthy.
From a tactical point of view, Sarri has an amazing style of play that focuses on retaining possession, diminutive movement off the ball, and distribution of quick, short passes on the ground.
Other key elements of Sarri’s line-up are the presence of a “regista” who dictates play in front of the back-line, such as Jorginho and overlapping attacking full-backs, in order to provide attacking fluid to his team’s frontline.
This fantabulous trademark won him several individual accolades at Napoli and also made his side the league runners-up in the 2017/2018 season. He spent one year at Chelsea, winning the UEFA Europa League, and returned to Italy in 2019 to replace Max Allegri at Juventus.
He spent one season at Juve too and he went on to win the 2019/2020 Serie A title, becoming the oldest manager to ever win the league.
Nonetheless, the manner at which he won the league at Juve cost him his job; despite having Ronaldo, his Juve side finished by a point above second-placed Inter Milan and recorded the lowest point tally (83 points) since the 2011/2012 season.
- Laurent Blanc (France) – Last Club Managed: Paris Saint Germain (2016)
It’s quite unbelievable that this French World Cup Winner has gone four years without staying on the dugout of any club. Maybe he’s not so respected.
Unlike Sarri, Blanc played professional football for numerous and notable club sides, the biggest of them includes Manchester United, Barcelona, and Inter Milan; no disrespect to Montpellier, Napoli, and Marseille. He’s also a former French international.
His managerial career started on a bright note. At Bordeaux in 2007, Blanc won domestic honors including the 2008/2009 Ligue 1 title. He left Bordeaux in 2010 to replace Raymond Domenech as the French National team manager. He guided Les Bleus to the quarter-finals of the UEFA Euro in 2012 and landed the PSG job in 2013.
Laurent Blanc attacks virtually, he relies on using long passes to penetrate space mainly by making use of sharp, pacy, and strong central forwards with fast and athletic wingers to implement his philosophy.
Blanc and his assistant, Jean-Louis Gasset left Paris Saint Germain in 2016 by mutual agreement leaving behind a substantial record in the history of PSG.
He’s been waiting to have another job since then, all he’s been getting are links with top clubs and none have materialized thus far.
He was linked recently with the Barcelona job following the sack of Quique Setién.
- Quique Setién (Spain) – Last Club Managed: Barcelona (2020)
Thankfully for Barcelona, a colossal disaster was averted when Setién was sacked three days after the end of the 2019/2020 LaLiga season.
The former Real Betis boss was appointed on January 13, 2020, in the wake of Valverde’s dismissal from the Blaugrana club to help them salvage a season which was never poised to be a failed season until Valverde’s sack.
Recall that Valverde was accused of not playing “the Barcelona way” and constant criticisms from pundits and a cross-section of Barcelona fans because of the consecutive ouster from the Champions League necessitated his sack.
Initially, settling for a manager who has not won a cipher in his 20-year career was suicidal and deservedly, Barca paid greatly for it. For the first time since 2007, the Catalan giants finished the season trophyless.
As if that wasn’t enough, Quique Setién added salt to the injury of Barca fans when he led his side to face a free-scoring Bayern Munich side and ended consuming 8 goals in the space of 90 minutes.
Whatever damage Valverde might have done when he capitulated in the champions league, Quique Setién did worse by losing the league to Real Madrid.
Previous Barca managers enjoyed historic moments on the Barcelona job and also used the Barca job to increase the value of their CV, the reverse was the case for Setién.
He’s still longing for another job since his sack, but his chance of landing a top job looks murky.
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- Marcelino (Spain) – Last Club Managed: Valencia (2019)
Marcelino sets up with an extremely compact defense, as such, he would deploy a positionally-orientated defensive system that allows the players to move in unison across the pitch depending on the positions of their teammates, the ball, space, and lastly their opponents.
While he banks on rapid counter-attacks by creating chances from his players’ passing and combination play.
Marcelino’s Valencia also took advantage of Barcelona’s decline in 2019 when they faced off in the finals of the Spanish Copa Del Rey in Seville.
But before then, he has diligently been working his way up the coaching ladder right from his hometown in Asturias with impressive performances at Sporting Gijon, Recreativo De Huelva, and Racing Santander before a stint he’d forget so soon at Real Zaragoza.
He then had another spell at Racing before moving to Sevilla which was nothing to write about. He couldn’t refuse the offer from Villarreal, thus going them he led them to promotion back to the Spanish LaLiga before leading the club to three successive top-six finishes as well as the 2015/2015 Europa League Semi-finals.
Some form of a fallout between himself and the club management ensured that Marcelino bowed out of the club and was then appointed at Valencia in May 2017.
Shortly after the victory over Barcelona in the 2019/2020 edition for the Spanish Copa Del Rey, he was dismissed as Valencia’s boss and has been out of a job since then.
- Luciano Spalleti (Italy) – Last Club Managed: Inter Milan (2019)
Spalletti is definitely one of the best Italian coaches for the past two decades, but more than that, he’s one of the most influential managers since the evolution of Italian football from 11 to 12 years ago.
The Tuscan coach prefers a 4-2-3-1 formation and modifies his ideas in such a way that the individual qualities of his players are exhibited to the optimal level.
Spalletti’s early career in management led him to struggle with Empoli, where he was head coach between July 1993 and June 1998.
But much of his success came when he was at the helm of Roma in the Italian capital where he won 2 Italian Cups, also losing one, one Italian Supercup, and finished three times second(one due to the Calciopoli scandal).
He achieved these with a far inferior budget to that of the two Milanese sides which in the same period were buying players such as Vieira and Ibrahimovic.
When he was at Zenit in Russia, he won the Russian Premier League twice (2010, 2011–12), the Russian Cup in 2010, and the Russian Super Cup in 2011.
He returned to Roma in January 2016 and during this period, the team qualified for the Champions League for two consecutive seasons. Spalletti joined Internazionale in the summer of 2017 and stayed up until May 2019 when he was sacked following speculations of his future.
- Leonardo Jardim (Portugual) – Last Club Managed: Monaco (2019)
The Portuguese manager has managed at some notable club sides across Europe, namely Braga, Olympiacos, Sporting CP, and Monaco.
Jardim is passionate about the game from a viewer’s and academic standpoint. The Venezuelan-born coach has made a brilliant manager despite the fact that he’s never played professional football.
He started coaching at the age of 22, training modest youths of the Portuguese island of Madeira, and switching these roles with spells as an assistant coach too.
His first top coaching gig was at Camacha, a third-tier Portuguese side, and from there he did wonders by clinching successive promotions at Chaves and Beira-Mar (from the third to the second division and from the second to the first one, respectively).
However, the club at which he managed where he shown like a million stars was at Monaco in France. His notorious duo of Radamel Falcao and French prodigy, Kylian Mbappe displayed ultra attacking football to win Monaco’s first league title in 17 years.
The side also reached the semi-finals in both the UEFA Champions League and the Coupe de France and lost the final of the Coupe de la Ligue to Paris Saint-Germain FC.
By and large, Leonardo Jardim tutored Monaco sides took the football world by surprise.
In early June 2017, having lost one of his attackers (Mbappe) to PSG, Jardim agreed to a new deal until 2020. But following a poor start to the season which included two losses in two Champions League games, he was left off the hook and Thierry Henry took over.
It never got any better under Henry and Jardim was reappointed again but this time, Monaco had been in a more precarious situation and was sacked again. Jardim has been clubless since then.
- Sam Allardyce
