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I’m excited for this article to be the first article back because this trend of overpaying out of fear is a trend that we see across different sports. The trend costs universities across the United States millions of dollars each year in buyout clauses to fire college football coaches. Soccer is not immune to this trend. I do not intend to kick a man while he’s down, but one manager and one club perfectly illustrate this trend: Manchester United and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Solskjaer was initially appointed as a caretaker manager to take over in 2018 for the recently fired Jose Mourinho. Solskjaer was the manager at Molde in Sweden at the time, but a deal was struck between the clubs to allow him to manage Manchester United in a caretaker capacity for the rest of the 2018/2019 season and return to Molde in May 2019 for the Eliteserien season. Though Solskjaer lacked the significant managerial experience that United typically look for in a manager, he was a known quantity around the Carrington training ground: for eleven years (1996-2007), Solskjaer played for Manchester United and was a fan favorite while at Old Trafford. Solskjaer ended up staying beyond his initial appointment, signing a permanent three-year contract with Manchester United in March 2019.
Solskjaer’s first two seasons are best described as consistently inconsistent. For three or four matches in a row, United would look great, reminding fans of the great Alex Ferguson teams in the 2000s. Suddenly, Solskjaer would drop points or lose two matches in a row where United looked like they didn’t deserve to be in the Premier League, let alone in the Top 6. However, the 2019/2020 COVID season was good for Solskjaer: although rivals Manchester City won the league by 12 points, United finished second in the Premier League and qualified for the 2020/2021 Champions League. With one year left to go on Solskjaer’s contract, United had to make a decision: should they sign Solskjaer to an extension or let him go? On one hand, Solskjaer had secured Champions League qualification for United in 2020/2021; on the other hand, Solskjaer had not demonstrated that his substitutions, late game decisions, or other choices were “special” or beyond the capacity of another manager. United chose to sign Solskjaer to an extension rather than bringing in another talented manager like Mauricio Pochettino or Massimiliano Allegri, both of whom were available at the time. United signed him to a new three-year contract in July 2021; five months later, Solskjaer was gone.
When United sacked Jose Mourinho, they paid him and his staff a 19.6 million pounds severance package; 15 million of that went to Mourinho. United apparently learned from that financial misstep and capped any severance package in Solskjaer’s contract extension to 7 million pounds. Nonetheless, 7 million pounds (not include any assistant coach severance) is a significant amount of money to pay a manager whose best accomplishments during his tenure were a second-place finish in the Premier League and a Europa League Final loss. The Solskjaer story at United is a long way to ask and answer a question: Why do clubs sign contracts with managers who, other than on one or two occasions, are average, and why are clubs willing to agree to such large severance packages in the contracts? The answer to these complex scenarios is actually quite simple: fear.
Managers can play a decisive role in a match and a season. The tactical adjustments, timing of substitutions, and other slight changes can be the difference between walking away with one point or three, or rescuing a point that is otherwise undeserved. This ability to capture or rescue points, along with the ability to manage complex personalities of international superstars, is why managers are so highly compensated. It is also why teams are afraid to lose a potentially good manager.
This answer, and the mini-Manchester United case study, sets forth a new question: Where will clubs go from here? A number of clubs have paid a significant amount of money to hire managers that are sub-par or average, hoping that those managers just need one more chance/job/team to prove they are elite. Almost all of these hires have failed to demonstrate that these managers (i.e. Sam Allardyce, Frank de Boer, Steve Bruce, etc.) are anything beyond average. In the ever-increasing arms race that is competitive global soccer, are managers now part of these arms races? Much like player wages since the early 1990s, are managerial wages set to increase at an exponential and alarming rate, ultimately causing financial issues and handicapping teams from signing other talent? Already afraid of losing top managerial talent, this is another fear that clubs should consider as well, but only time will tell whether this warning was heeded.
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