What were those scenes! Although few remember the outcome of the match, we all remember Thomas Tuchel and Antonio Conte turning a handshake into a cockfight after a heated London derby on a Sunday afternoon in September.
The fact that we can still remember this wonderfully adolescent confrontation between two grown men so clearly is not only because of the iconic quality of the photos that were taken at that time, but also because the word « back then « doesn’t belong here at all. . Because what’s really remarkable about this incident is that it happened this season.
And yet these scenes look like a relic from another time, which we can hardly talk about anymore except with a dripping preface of nostalgia, « Do you remember when… ». So how did the dust of history end up on images only a few months old?
To answer this question, let’s move on to the present of the protagonists: none of them coaches a London club anymore. Thomas Tuchel should find the cabin lost by Julian Nagelsmann at Bayern, while Antonio Conte is unemployed. Both were dismissed by their clubs in England, Tuchel shortly after that London derby in September, Conte just a few days ago. And with the fact that they are no longer sitting in the coaching chair they started the season in, the two are not alone.
Because according to the ‘(Site notre blog d’information).de’ portal, there have already been 52 coaching changes in Europe’s five major leagues since the start of the season. In the Bundesliga, for example, Bruno Labbadia has just been released after just 129 days at VfB Stuttgart and replaced by Sebastian Hoeneß. Thus, Hoeneß now coaches the club which not so long ago was the employer of Pellegrino Matarazzo, who in turn currently coaches TSG Hoffenheim, the former club of Sebastian Hoeneß.
Although it wasn’t that long ago and most German fans still remember well how Matarazzo surprisingly managed to stay with VfB, this time just like the handshake between Tuchel and Conte, it’s in a world of (Site notre bureau spécialisé) in which nothing is older than yesterday’s coach. , which feels like years.
But how do you escape this hire and fire hell, in which coaches are repeatedly given two-, three- or four-year contracts, even though everyone involved is aware that fulfilling a contract in (Site notre bureau spécialisé) modern professional is the absolute exception? Neither the five-year contract nor any assurances that long-term plans were in the works with him could prevent Julian Nagelsmann from being knocked out after just a year and a half.
The demand for 18 SC Freiburgs, where Christian Streich was able to lead undisturbed all the ups and downs for a good 800 years in addition to his work as Federal President of the Heart, would be extremely naive.
Because the idea that the leaders of a club, who must ultimately fear for their own positions, do not react after a series of defeats and trust a coach despite the sporting situation, seems simply insane outside of Brisgau.
So if achieving the long-term contracts cannot be the goal because reality constantly shows that, except in Freiburg, it does not work, the problem may not lie with the coach or the officials, but in the long-term contract. This is indicated by the record of another recently dismissed coach at TSG Hoffenheim: André Breitenreiter.
For ten games Breitenreiter is seemingly a top coach with a points guarantee, but after that it all went downhill quickly for the 49-year-old in all his previous Bundesliga positions. One can now quickly conclude that a Breitenreiter obligation is always a death in installments. Bearing in mind that there are only eight matchdays left in the current Bundesliga season, Breitenreiter would be the right player for any Buli club that needs sure points to survive.
TSG Hoffenheim, for example, could simply re-sign Breitenreiter to ensure he stays in the league and, if you follow Breitenreiter’s previous numbers, he would definitely stay. You could then end the collaboration, which would then be called very successful, and think about something for the next ten games without having to pay several salaries at the same time.
In doing so, one should then conveniently save oneself and the assembled journalists from pretending during the PK presentation that they present the solution for the next few years, more with which one really wants to build something long-term. But even such an approach would, of course, entail certain difficulties. Imagine a club letting go of a manager who just saved the club in the season finale. What scenes would that be!