World Cup managerial casualties

The Qatar World Cup has already seen a number of World Cup managerial casualties, with men paying the price of relative failure in the competition with their jobs.

Tite, Brazil’s manager, and Louis Van Gaal, the Dutch coach, are the most recent to resign after their respective quarterfinal games were decided by penalties, Brazil against Croatia and the Netherlands against Argentina.

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The 61-year-old had managed Brazil since 2016 and was widely expected to end the country’s 20-year wait for a sixth World Cup. But after his team had danced and showboated their way to the last eight, they were undone by a battle-hardened Croatian side who kept their nerve better from 12 yards.

Van Gaal couldn’t against Messi’s gang besides recovering from 2 goal difference in the last minutes of the game, the match was heated (17 yellow cards), and the Argentinians took the win by penalties with a brilliant “Dibu” Martinez who covered two penalty kicks.

They are by no means the first big names to crash out. Belgium arrived in Qatar the second-ranked team in the world according to FIFA, but they had an ageing squad, and their “Golden Generation” was past its sell -by date.

Fractures in the dressing room along traditional linguistic and cultural lines between Flemish and French speakers had already started to appear, and only widened as the team struggled. They failed to qualify from their group, and that was enough for Roberto Martinez to quit his job.

He had steered them to a third-placed finish in Russia four years ago, but that was probably the best chance Belgium had of winning the World Cup with the current crop of players.

Portuguese Paolo Bento had an eventful World Cup with South Korea, earning himself a red card after their loss in a group game to Ghana, but his side still qualified for the last 16 with a last gasp winner over Portugal.

His team, though, were then overwhelmed by Brazil in a one-sided knockout game and Bento decided it was time to call it quits, and that he had taken the team as far as he could. He had been appointed to the job just after the last World Cup.

Spain began the World Cup in scintillating fashion, putting seven goals past Costa Rica, with a team full of exciting teenagers like Gavi, Pedri and Ansu Fati that seemed to suggest they could be the heirs to the great side that won three major international trophies a decade ago.

However, that proved to be a false dawn, and the lack of a central striker ultimately proved to be the undoing for Luis Enriqué and his team. As they found to their cost in their last 156 tie with Morocco, it is possible to have almost endless possession, but, if there is no end product, then it is just sterile.

Enriqué paid for that loss with his job, but he was a victim of the country’s obsession with the past and its refusal to move on from the era of Tiki-Taka football.

These are unlikely to be the last managerial casualties of this World Cup. Didier Deschamps has the chance of retaining the World Cup that he won with France four years ago, but he wants to return to club football after the tournament. Zinedine Zidane is waiting in the wings to replace him.

And although Gareth Southgate is under contract with England, it would be no surprise if he were to step down at the conclusion of the World Cup with the FA looking for somebody with new ideas.