Sabri Lamouchi has become the first manager in World Cup history to be sacked after just one match – a 5-1 thrashing by Sweden that prompted the Tunisian Football Association to terminate his contract by “mutual agreement”.
The former Nottingham Forest boss was appointed only five months ago, replacing Sami Trabelsi after Tunisia’s Africa Cup of Nations exit, but his reign has ended in humiliation in Guadalupe, Mexico. Sweden’s Viktor Gyökeres and Alexander Isak both scored as the Group F tie turned into a rout, and by Monday evening Lamouchi was out of a job.
“Tunisia sack Sabri Lamouchi after one World Cup match, appoint Hervé Renard as replacement.”
Initially, reports after Sunday’s defeat suggested Lamouchi had been immediately dismissed, but sources told BBC Sport that the 54-year-old actually took training on Monday. However, the Tunisian FA soon confirmed his departure, with former Morocco and Saudi Arabia manager Hervé Renard appointed until the end of the tournament.
Lamouchi admitted the loss was “painful” and said his side had made “too many mistakes”. “We are shooting ourselves in the foot, we are hurting ourselves,” he added. Yet his record as head coach tells its own story: just one win in five games – a 1-0 victory over Haiti in his first match in charge.
Tunisia’s warm-up for the World Cup had already been alarming: a 1-0 loss to Austria followed by a 5-0 drubbing by Belgium. The defeat by Sweden therefore came as little surprise, but the speed of the sacking still echoes previous World Cup drama. Henryk Kasperczak was dismissed by Tunisia in 1998 after two poor results, and South Korea’s Cha Bum-kun also lost his job after two defeats that same year. Spain’s Julen Lopetegui was sacked two days before the 2018 tournament after agreeing to join Real Madrid. Yet no manager had ever been fired after a single match – until now.
Lamouchi’s successor, Hervé Renard, has a reputation for tournament success, having guided Morocco to the 2018 World Cup and won the Africa Cup of Nations with Zambia and Ivory Coast. He now faces a daunting task: Tunisia still have to face Japan and the Netherlands in their remaining group fixtures, and must somehow recover from the heaviest defeat of their World Cup history to have any hope of progressing.