When Managers Lose The Dressing Room

With the Pogba-Mourinho drama taking more turns than a season of Prison Break, it got us wondering – which other manager-player spat led the coach to get the boot after losing the dressing room?

Managing a football club means you’re juggling plenty of balls. One of the hardest things to juggle is a dressing room full of different personalities, and different egos. Some players are willing to lay their life on the lines for their team, happy to play wherever the manager places them, whilst others want to be pandered to; needing their ego stroked often and don’t play well when things don’t go their way.

Managing at the top level is stressful. Let’s take a look at the managers who couldn’t keep control of their dressing room, and ultimately lost their job because of it:

  1. Carlo Ancelotti – Bayern Munich

Ancelotti has succeeded at so many clubs and is one of only two coaches to win the UEFA Champions League three times as a manager, so it is surprising that he couldn’t make it work at German giants Bayern Munich.

After taking over from Pep Guardiola, Bayern set their sights on a better finish than the previous season’s semi-final Champions League place. After winning the Bundesliga title in lesser fashion than under their previous manager and with a poor Champions League showing, the players turned on Ancelotti; most notably Arjen Robben who disliked the amount of game time he was getting.

5 players in total turned against the Italian, including Robert Lewandowski and Thomas Muller. After a humbling 3-0 defeat to PSG in the Champions League, the higher-ups had had enough and sacked him two days later.

  1. David Moyes

Taking over at Manchester United from the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson was never going to be an easy task. So when David Moyes, long standing Everton manager, was given the job, eyebrows were raised.

Having a manager who had won nothing throughout his career take the reigns at the biggest club in English football was definitely a longshot. A longshot that failed miserably, as Moyes seemed to have neither the tactical know-how or the leadership qualities necessary to get the players on board.

In one famous incident Moyes supposedly showed the United defenders – which included the likes of Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic – a video of Phil Jagielka, in order to demonstrate how he would like them to defend.

After this, training sessions saw players quickly become disinterested and the team lost its once famous discipline. As results started to suffer, the Scot was given his marching orders.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *