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Do football managers lose their spark after three seasons at a club? | Chris Evans
Marcelo Bielsa is not the first manager to suffer a dip in his fourth season at a club. Do coaches have a shelf life?
By Chris Evans for The Set Pieces
It’s human instinct to seek meaning among chaos: to crave an explanation for why something that once seemed unfathomable has happened – and never more so when judging a football manager’s success. As Marcelo Bielsa became the latest managerial casualty in the Premier League upon leaving Leeds last month, that thirst for finding order beyond the headlines led several pundits to suggest his downfall was how long he’d been in the role. More specifically, had he exceeded the optimal time a manager should stay in a job: three years?
The argument carries some weight. Bielsa’s fourth year was when the upward curve Leeds had been on under his management started to dip. But is there really something in the idea that managers should work on a three-year cycle? Former Milan and Benfica coach Béla Guttmann believed so, declaring “the third year is fatal” and arguing that things start to unravel for a manager after passing that threshold.
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