Tanya Lee | Only as good as your last performance

I still remember as a child that on bringing home my class reports, my father would peruse the results and scold me for getting a lower grade than I did the term before. He would always compare the grades and remind me that I was only as good as my last performance. Nowhere does that ring more true than in the world of sports.

Surprising news hit the wires this week that newly promoted Red Stripe Premier League (RSPL) outfit Molynes United were without a coach as Lijyasu Simms had walked away from the job. He seemed to have been at loggerheads with members of the executive of the club.

Quite shocking! Simms was responsible for Molynes United’s historic ascension to top-flight football last season and is responsible for a perfect start to their first-ever RSPL campaign, with six straight wins to start the season. The team sits in third place among 12 teams on the RSPL table, but they have lost their last six games and gone a further eight without a win. Whether that is a factor is currently unknown to this writer.

Coaches come and go, but this takes me back to a slew of coaches who quit or were sacked, much to the surprise of their fan base and opponents alike, given their previously historic results.

POCHETTINO SACKING

This month, Mauricio Pochettino was unceremoniously sacked just months after leading Tottenham to their first UEFA Champions League final ever! Most shameful of all, he was denied the opportunity to say goodbye to the players. Both players and manager had to resort to texts and social-media exchanges to say their respective goodbyes.

Pochettino was not given a significant budget compared to the top teams in the English Premier League, yet he turned Tottenham into a bona fide top-four contender during his five-and-a-half-year tenure. But the English Premiership is the world’s most competitive league for good reason as Tottenham had fallen eerily close to the relegation zone, just six points away in 14th place.

But Claudio Ranieri must have had flashbacks after seeing Pochettino’s demise. Leicester City surprised the football world in the 2015-16 season with one of the most memorable wins in Premier League history. The massive underdogs won their first Premier League title by a whopping 10 points adrift of their closest rival, Arsenal. Ranieri’s small budget team, lack of depth on the bench, and loss of his best defensive midfielder, N’Golo Kanté, to Chelsea the next season, meant he had much more work to do in juggling across the Champions League and the Premier League. He was sacked in February 2017 after five straight defeats even though Leicester City was outside of the relegation zone and finished top of their Champions League group in their first-ever stint in Europe. Unbelievable, to say the least.

Chelsea’s owner, Roman Abramovic, has been known to show more coaches the door than any other team in recent Premier League history. Probably most inexplicable of all was Carlo Ancelotti, who won the Premier League and FA Cup titles in his first season in 2009-10. Ancelotti endured the wrath of his owner the following season merely by finishing second on the Premier League table and being knocked out in the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League by Manchester United. He was sacked for not producing a trophy that season.

But the most bizarre exit of all came when Italian youth coach Massimiliano Riccini fielded a team, Tuscany-based Invictasauro, that beat their opponents 27-0 after 90 minutes. Club owner Paulo Brogelli immediately sacked Riccini and swiftly issued an apology to the opposing team: “We were stunned and deeply regretful when hearing that our Juniors team had beaten Marina Calcio 27-0. The opponent must always be respected and that did not happen today,” he wrote.

Who knew … It doesn’t always pay to win.

Tanya Lee has over 10 years’ expertise as a Caribbean sports marketer and is also an athlete manager and publicist.