In-season head-coach changes have positive short- and long-term effects on team perfor­mance in men’s soccer—evidence from the Premier League, Bundesliga, and La Liga

ABSTRACT

The study investigated effects of in-season head-coach changes (HCC) on the subsequent team performance in men’s English, German, and Spanish premier soccer leagues. A pre-post matched-controls design involved 149 HCC-teams and 3,960 games in 2010–19. Analyses (paired t-test, repeated-measurement ANOVA) revealed five central findings. 1. An HCC was preceded by a spell of under-performance, with a particular performance collapse in the two last pre-HCC rounds. 2. Performance showed an instant, strong improvement in the first post-HCC game. 3. The performance remained increased up to 16 post-HCC rounds. 4. Post-HCC performance also exceeded teams’ initial baseline performance earlier before the HCC. Accordingly, the summed performance through 8, 12, and 16 post-HCC rounds exceeded the performance through 8, 12, and 16 pre-HCC rounds (0.92 < Cohen’s d < 1.17). 5. HCC-teams’ pre-post performance development differed from matched non-HCC control teams. In sum, the present evidence suggests positive short, medium, and long-term HCC effects at the highest professional soccer level. Theoretical hypotheses discussed in the literature – the “common-sense,” “ritual-scapegoating,” “vicious-circle,” and “mean-reversion” hypotheses – are partly inconsistent with the present evidence. However, the evidence is fully consistent with a new hypothesis introduced here: the hypothesis of relief from a coach’s performance-suppressing factor (RCPSF).

KEYWORDS:

• Professional soccer
• international
• coach dismissal
• performance
• theory

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this paper. The authors would also like to express their sincere thanks to Yannick Becker, Daniel Feist, Wladislaw Kurotschkin, and Jonas Müllenbach, master students of physical education and members of the project team, for their support in the collection and preparation of the data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.