40 matches to say good-bye : the hard life of coaches

Issue number 297 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post analyses the employment of head coaches in 84 top divisions worldwide between January 2015 and December 2019. During this period, the average number of coaches per club in charge for at least three domestic league matches goes from 9.1 in Bolivia to 2.6 in Sweden. On average, a coach managed 40.6 games.

The data per league represent a fair estimate of the real ones as we only included in the sample the championships for which we could find the complete coaching history for at least half of the clubs concerned. The club rankings only include teams that have always been in the first division during the period considered.

The highest value was recorded for Club Real Potosí. The Bolivian side employed 20 different coaches for at least three domestic league matches between 2015 and 2019. On average, they were in charge for 11.3 games. Only 30 clubs out of the 766 taken into consideration employed a single coach during the five-year period studied. All current big-5 league teams had at least two coaches during this period.

Average number of coaches per team since 2015

84 top division league clubs (season 2019/20 or 2020). Coaches in charge for at least three domestic league matches until 31/12/2019.

Number of coaches by teams since 2015

Permanent top division league clubs (2015-2019). Coaches in charge for at least three domestic league matches until 31/12/2019.