This is the time of year when coaches in European football’s top-five leagues can finally catch their breath, raise a glass and give thanks for surviving the season in their jobs.

OK, perhaps the scene doesn’t look quite like that. Top-level coaches typically rank higher than the human average on the self-belief scale — if they did not, they would not last long. But private relief and gratitude would not be unreasonable emotional responses to reaching the summer without getting sacked, given the remarkable scale of coaching turnover that has become normalised within European football.

During the 2025-26 season, there were 11 coaching departures in the Premier League. That figure does not include caretakers — such as Calum McFarlane at Chelsea or Mike Jackson at Burnley — nor does it factor in Pep Guardiola, Andoni Iraola, Marco Silva and Oliver Glasner enjoying the rare privilege of leaving clubs on their own terms after the final matchday.

It was a similar story in Europe’s other major leagues: there were 10 coach departures in the Bundesliga, nine in Ligue 1 and eight apiece in La Liga and Serie A. It was not a particularly exceptional season, either, when you look at the average number of coach exits for those leagues in the last five completed campaigns (below).

The extent of European football’s coaching instability appears even starker when compared to the four major sports leagues in the United States.

On the surface, the average number of coach departures per season appears greater for Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Hockey League (NHL), while the National Football League (NFL) figure looks in line with Ligue 1. The National Basketball Association (NBA) stands alone as a relative coach’s paradise.

But a fair comparison can only be made when accounting for the number of teams in each league — 30 for the NBA and MLB, 32 for the NFL and NHL, while the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A each have 20 clubs, and the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 have 18. When average coach exits are viewed as a proportion of the league as a whole, a truer picture emerges:

In the last five completed seasons, head coach departures in Europe’s top five leagues are at least 10 per cent more frequent on average than in the NHL and MLB, and between 15 and 25 per cent more frequent than in the NFL and the NBA.

To understand the reasons, it helps to dig into why European football coaches get sacked in the first place. An unceremonious in-season exit can be influenced by tensions with owners, a loss of faith in the dressing room, a toxic atmosphere in the stands, or all of the above. Fundamentally, though, it tends to follow a bad run of results that leave the season either doomed or in danger of falling short of expectations.

Falling short of expectations invariably means losing a lot of money — from not qualifying for the Champions League, from missing out on European football altogether or, most terrifying of all, being relegated. For Premier League clubs, any one of these represents the loss of tens of millions of pounds in broadcast income, and significant financial knock-on effects for matchday and commercial revenue.

“Football is unique, probably in any industry in the world, in terms of the revenue cliff edges that exist,” says Omar Chaudhuri, chief intelligence officer at Twenty First Group. “You have these huge drop-offs if you don’t qualify for the Champions League, if you’re not in Europe. The impact of relegation is massive and well-documented. You’re going to panic as an owner if you’re on the wrong side, or if you look like you might be on the wrong side of those cliff edges.

“There is an inherent culture in football that the only way to change results mid-season is to change the head coach. But I would say that particularly in English football, one of the big drivers is the prospect of not making as much money next year as you did this year.”

Ange Postecoglou was one of Nottingham Forest’s four coaches as they fought against relegation (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

Alex Stewart, CEO of Analytics FC, agrees. “Promotion, relegation, access to continental competitions and also just the scaling of prize money dependent on finishing places are huge incentives to chop and change,” he says.

Relegation is not a concern in the U.S.’s closed major sports leagues. Making the play-offs can serve as a loose parallel to qualifying for the Champions League or European competition in a sporting sense, but less so in a financial one (even if hosting multiple extra high-stakes games in a deep postseason run can be very lucrative). Varying degrees of revenue sharing help even the worst teams to operate with far greater financial certainty.

“You know the revenue is going to be there and they’re going to generate money,” says Billy King, former general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers and Brooklyn Nets. “You have the TV contracts, and you have the cap, so you can control your costs. That’s in the NFL, and it’s the same in the NBA. NHL, too, and baseball is trying to get there.

“If there was a relegation system (in the NBA) where the top 16 teams make the play-offs, and the bottom four get relegated to the G League (the NBA’s developmental division), you would see teams playing very differently. The pressure would be on because that would drastically change your revenue structure.”

The absence of that existential threat below removes one key incentive for U.S. sports teams to fire a losing coach. Another critical factor is the vast difference between how talent acquisition occurs in European football and in the major American sports leagues.

‘Project’ has become the most tediously overused word in football in recent years, particularly since the open nature of the transfer market, coupled with financial regulations that fall some way short of a hard U.S.-style salary cap, actively work against the desire for patience. Clubs with significant budgets can rebuild or reboot their squads within a single summer, often at eye-watering expense in the Premier League, and generate immediate expectations.

“There’s no European-wide salary cap, so the owners can spend, and when they spend money to bring in top talent, they’re expecting to win,” King adds. “There are salary rules in almost all the U.S. sports, except baseball, that limit your ability to be good quickly, so you have to give the coach time because the rules don’t allow you to go get two or three top players.

“It takes time in the NBA because usually a coach is not taking over a team that’s ready to win. They’re coming in to help build and develop a new culture and a system. Very rarely do you get a situation like the New York Knicks, where one coach gets to the conference finals (last season), they make a change, a new coach comes in, and now they go to the finals.”

Rebuilding slowly and steadily can be a highly attractive and rewarding path in the major American sports leagues, where a bad season not only lacks the downside risk of relegation, but in most cases actually increases a team’s access to elite talent through the draft.

The Tennessee Titans struggled last season and benefitted from it in the draft (Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)

“You’re basically guaranteed a really steady level of income, almost irrespective of how badly you do (in U.S. sports),” adds Stewart. “And actually, if you do badly, you’re going to get a higher draft pick. Whereas there’s no upside to performing badly in football, because there is a guaranteed diminishment of everything.”

“In European football, if you’re in February and the results are bad, you can’t just wait until May and then expect to get loads of good players in — you could be relegated by that point, and your ability to sign players is going to be tough if that is the case,” Chaudhuri says. “If it’s November in the NFL and you’re not going to make the play-offs, it’s not the end of the world because next year maybe you’ve got a better draft pick.”

As well as being hugely beneficial for competitive balance, draft incentives also create a much more forgiving environment for coaches, who can focus on player development and longer-term priorities rather than worrying about being fired for immediate results.

The bad news is that very little of the above can be applied to improve the job security of European football coaches. But perhaps there is one thing that can be: a more egalitarian culture of accountability for failure within U.S. sports teams that goes beyond the head coach.

It is not uncommon for general managers to hold press conferences at the end of each season where they field questions about what went right or wrong, and explain their decisions. They also get fired with far greater regularity than senior football executives, at least in the Premier League, when owners deem them to have underperformed.

King believes this is also a product of the differing mechanics of American sports leagues. “If you’re signing guys in soccer and they have a track record but they’re not playing well, you can be like, ‘OK, it can’t be him, because he’s done it everywhere else he’s been, so it’s got to be the coach’.

“In the NBA, when you draft a guy, and it doesn’t turn out well, and the guy drafted three spots behind you is playing better, it shows. That’s where it’s easier to be judged (as an executive).”

But things may yet change in European football. Last month, having missed out on Champions League qualification by finishing fifth in Serie A, Milan sacked their head coach Massimiliano Allegri, as well as CEO Giorgio Furlani, sporting director Igli Tare and technical director Geoffrey Moncada.

It would not be hugely shocking if more European football club owners start to respond to failure more like owners in U.S. sports — particularly since, increasingly, they are the same people.

As part of our Language of Soccer World Cup series, The Athletic is speaking to supporters of all 48 nations competing at the 2026 edition to capture their unique football culture, distilled into a single phrase. You can read the articles in one place here.

Tous Ensembles — All Together

It will not sound like a harmonious choir inside Seattle’s Lumen Field when Belgium’s national anthem is sung before their World Cup opener against Egypt there on June 15. The Belgian fans’ voices will clash, the rhythms will interfere and some will be singing completely different words than others.

“We don’t even have a national anthem in one language,” says Paul Van den Brande, 60, who travels from his home in the city of Antwerp to stadiums all over the world following Belgium’s team — nicknamed the Red Devils.

“There are the Dutch fans singing Flemish and the French fans singing French, but that’s the only barrier in the travelling support: language. There is unity.”

It is a rare idiosyncrasy that a national anthem can be sung in three different languages — La Brabanconne, the French version, De Brabanconne, the Dutch one and, less commonly, Die Brabanconne, the German edition, belonging to one per cent of the population — but Belgium is a particularly blended country.

Belgium fans sing its national anthem(s) before their 2018 World Cup semi-final against France (Jasper Juinen/Getty Images)

A federal state of just 11 million people, they punch well above their weight when it comes to international football — and internal politics.

The country comprises three regions and 10 provinces. You have the Flemish population to the north of the country in Flanders, bordering the Netherlands, and the French-speaking population down south in Wallonia, next to France. Then there is the German-speaking community of East Belgium, adjacent to the Belgian-German-Dutch border tri-point.

Around 59 per cent of the population speaks Dutch, mainly people in Flanders, while French is spoken by 40 per cent. A significant portion of the Flanders population feel that they subsidise Wallonia, and this has fuelled support for a breakaway from Belgium into an independent state.

“During our Red Devils games, these moments are maybe the only time when Belgium is united as a single country,” says Michael Vandersteen, president of the country’s biggest fan group, De Bemvoort.

“In normal life, that feeling is not part of our people, I’m afraid. Shared pride for our country is what we are missing. I would even say the lack of that feeling among the players was part of us not winning that big prize (in football) in these years. It was the slight difference between winning and not winning, in my eyes.”

Belgium’s motto on its coat of arms reads ‘Unity makes strength’, but it is the football songbook that best captures that ideal.

When Belgian fans travel to North America for this World Cup, the most commonly-heard song will be ‘Waar is dat feestje? Hier is dat feestje!’, which translates as ‘Where’s the party? Here’s the party!’ and, although it has Dutch lyrics, it is also sung by those from the south of the country.

The reverse is also true for the slogan heard at every single national-team match — ‘Tous Ensembles, Tous Ensembles’, which means All Together, All Together, chanted by the Dutch speakers. 

Belgium’s supporters travel as one. The passion is exemplified by a tight-knit, hardcore group of around 300 fans who go to every game, but they are representative of the wider country.

They organise a fan-walk to every away match, and at the 2018 World Cup in Russia had 10,000 supporters who came together. They also try to have a game against their counterparts from the opposition country and even played a match in Red Square, Moscow, during that tournament. They won, with a little help from Hernan Losada, an Argentinian midfielder who had just retired as a player with Belgian second-division club Beerschot Wilrijk.

“There was a problem with everyone bringing their regional club flags to the ground (for Belgium matches) 15 years ago, but that changed and they’re gone,” says Steven Vekeman, who has run a supporters’ club, Kelderduivelsm, in the city of Mechelen since his homeland co-hosted the 2000 European Championship with the Netherlands. “Different colours, same passion.”

The national team have been a force for solidarity.

In 1986, Belgium’s surprise journey to the World Cup semi-finals in Mexico moved the needle on national identity. There was a 15 per cent jump in the number of people in the Flemish community who said they felt Belgian.

Former captain and manager Marc Wilmots became a symbol of unity during his spell in charge of the team between 2012 and 2016. He spoke all three official state languages and was married to a Flemish woman, soon after the cause of the region’s independence had gained support. One separatist party even claimed, in the aftermath of Belgium failing to qualify for Euro 2008, that the team does not fight for their country, nation, people or colours.

Some Belgium players only spoke one of the two official languages, which used to create cliques in the changing room. Every squad selection, although never an official policy, had to try to achieve parity.

But English has been the language of choice in the dressing room for many years now. To ensure talent from both sides was represented, the Royal Belgian Football Association revamped youth development at the turn of the millennium, standardising coaching practices to promote individual development ahead of reductive regional quotas.

“We’re a big example of the power of unity,” says Dietert Bernaers, 55, from Leuven. “We’re small but complex. Everybody does their best to speak both languages. If not, it’s no problem, we will find a third or fourth to speak in. That is what is important. Being proud of these colours means standing for all people across Belgium.”

“During tournaments, there is no difference between the Walloon and the Flemish,” says Luc Verbiest from Thulin, who is part of Les Diables Borains supporters’ group, 20km from the French border.

“However, when we don’t win, Flemish journalists are more virulent towards the players and coach if he is a Walloon.

“They tended to say it was thanks to the Flemish we have a real national team but in recent years we’ve had several players like Eden Hazard and Vincent Kompany, so the situation changed and they now advocate national unity.”

For decades, Belgium were the unremarkable neighbours of the Dutch and French. Humble, laid back. “They call us the Japanese of Europe,” says Van den Brande. That changed when the likes of Jan Ceulemans, Enzo Scifo, Jean-Marie Pfaff and Eric Gerets reached the Euros’ final in 1980 and sealed a fourth-place finish at that World Cup six years later.

After that, Belgium failed to qualify for the Euros in 1988, 1992, 1996, 2004, 2008 and 2012. They were absent, too, from the World Cups of 2006 and 2010. Combined, they had been present at only five of 14 major tournaments. Back to the shadows they went, finding the group stage or round of 16 as their ceiling when they did manage to qualify.

Until, that is, the best and most talented squad they have produced emerged in the 2010s. Kevin De Bruyne, Eden Hazard, Thibaut Courtois, Vincent Kompany, Romelu Lukaku, Dries Mertens, Mousa Dembele, Axel Witsel, Toby Alderweireld, Jan Vertonghen and Thomas Vermaelen all played at the very elite of European club football for over a decade.

They helped Belgium to the top of FIFA’s world rankings, occupying first place for a total of 1,352 days between 2018 and 2022, a period that was them finish third at that World Cup in Russia and lose 2-1 to eventual champions Italy in the Euro 2020 quarter-finals.

Belgium were knocked out in the group stage at the 2022 World Cup (Michael Steele/Getty Images)

Today, with only Lukaku, De Bruyne and Courtois as survivors of the old guard, a new Belgium team are emerging, with winger Jeremy Doku and attacking midfielder Charles De Ketelaere as its key protagonists.

Several of the fans we spoke to for this article travelled to the U.S. city of Chicago for their friendly with Mexico in the March international window, and many of the people they encountered there did not know of Belgium. Each had their own version of the same sort of story: in Kazakhstan during qualifying for this World Cup, their flag was presumed to be that of Germany. In Russia eight years ago, Belgium was understood to be part of Paris.

“A lot of people don’t know Belgium at all. It makes it easy to be underdogs,” says Wesley Cuelemens, 40, who is a Union Saint-Gilloise fan from Hasselt, near Genk in Flanders. 

He runs his own 100-strong supporters’ club and has been following the team since Euro 2016, not missing a game home or away for the past five years. Beating Brazil to reach the 2018 World Cup semi-finals remains a treasured memory.

“Before the game, a lot of their fans were quite arrogant,” adds Cuelemens. “We were on a fan walk and they were saying, ‘You’re going home, you’re going home, bye bye’. When we won, it was like a big middle finger. (Brazil’s star forward) Neymar cried and we were on the ground pretending (to be him).”

Others cast their minds back to a rain-soaked 2-1 away win against Croatia in October 2013, the night a Lukaku double ensured Belgium qualified for the following year’s World Cup.

It was felt that Belgium were on the verge of greatness. And they did come close to it.

At Brazil 2014, they lost to eventual runners-up Argentina 1-0 in the quarter-finals. Four years later, having beaten England 1-0 in the group stage and Japan 3-2 in added time in the round of 16, then outplayed Brazil in that 2-1 quarter-final victory, they appeared to have the required camaraderie in place to go all the way. Instead, they fell 1-0 to title-bound France in the semi-finals.

Between those World Cups, in 2016’s Euros, they were knocked out by a Gareth Bale-inspired Wales, 3-1, in the quarter-finals. It was another case of missed opportunity. Another game the Belgians had entered as favourites.

Now they are back to the more familiar territory of arriving at a tournament as outsiders.

“When you have a golden team, there is pressure to perform, and we get criticised that we don’t get prizes,” says Geert Verdonck, 60, whose fan club boasts 50 members and who has not missed a Belgium game since 2013.

“When we don’t have a golden team, we get laughed at when we don’t win a trophy; and if we don’t have a golden team, we get laughed at for not being good. For the few hundred who follow (Belgium) everywhere, it doesn’t matter. It’s been fun to have these players (of that generation) but now we have a new generation building.

“We still have a lot of golden players, but how they create a team is the interesting part. Can it all fall together?”

It is the perennial question when it comes to Belgium, a nation defined by its distinct differences attempting to compromise its way to a solution, to be tous ensembles.

These fans hope that, without the egos and fame, this 2026 group might strike the perfect balance.

The Language of Soccer series is sponsored by Google.

The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Sponsors have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.

As part of our Language of Soccer World Cup series, The Athletic is speaking to supporters of all 48 nations competing at the 2026 edition to capture their unique football culture, distilled into a single phrase. You can read the articles in one place here.

“Masr! Masr! Masr!” — “Egypt! Egypt! Egypt!”

It’s a simple chant, accompanied by claps and whistles between every instance of the word ‘Egypt’ in Arabic.

For years, it has filled the Cairo International Stadium, the arena where 46-year-old Ahmed Hamdy had his most unforgettable football experience.

“My biggest memory of the Egyptian national team was when I was a little kid,” says Hamdy, who lives in New York after moving to the United States in 2000. “I went to the stadium with my father, against Algeria in 1989 — the final match that took us to the World Cup at Italia ’90.

“We had box seats, and my dad wanted to attend the Friday prayers. What he didn’t realise was that people were at the stadium from 9am, and we couldn’t even get into our seats because the stadium was over-capacity (the reported attendance for the match is over 100,000). They let us go and sit in another stand.

“It was a hell of an experience — everybody chanting non-stop from the morning all the way to a 3pm game. Some people didn’t even go to the Friday prayers. They prayed in their seats!”

Egypt’s 1-0 victory that day is etched into the memory of the fans who attended because it was the second leg of a play-off to reach the 1990 World Cup. With the first match a month earlier having ended goalless, the result secured just Egypt’s second appearance at the tournament, 56 years on from their first.

Reaching that World Cup meant a lot to Egyptians. “The real memories I have are from 1990, watching us play the Republic of Ireland and the Netherlands (draws in the first two group matches), and when we lost to England (in the third and final one, meaning Egypt were eliminated from the tournament),” says Teymour El Derini. “It had a big impact on me — my company is called ‘1990’.”

Qualification for the upcoming World Cup was straightforward, winning eight of 10 games to finish five points clear at the top of their group, but before the tournament’s expansion from 32 teams to 48 for the 2026 edition, getting this far was a hoodoo for Egyptians.

Egypt fans make themselves heard at the Cairo International Stadium during a 2022 World Cup qualifier against Senegal (Mohamed Hossam/Getty Images)

“It’s frustrating because we are the kings of Africa (no country has won more Africa Cup of Nations titles), but when we play other matches (it’s not the same),” says El Derini. “There has been frustration over the years of not making the World Cup with our golden generation.”

“The one defining characteristic in supporting Egypt is that you are very confident heading into the Africa Cup of Nations but you lack confidence when you go into World Cup qualifiers — it’s a tale of two tournaments,” says Ahmed Assem, who echoes the thoughts of El Derini, despite the 15-year age gap between them.

Part of the experience of supporting Egypt is the never-ending rollercoaster of emotions — seven AFCON titles, but only four World Cup appearances (including 2026), with a series of near-misses in qualifying from the 1994 edition to finally getting over the line again for the one in 2018.

This turbulence in emotions isn’t only between their continental championship and the World Cup, it’s from one game to the next, and within the same match, even the same minute.

“The lows are too low, but the highs are very high,” says Mostafa Omar, who experienced the ecstasy of being at the stadium when Egypt qualified for Russia 2018 (their first World Cup since 1990), and the misery of a missed chance that forced another play-off against Algeria in the 2010 qualifiers. Unlike 20 years earlier, this was a one-off match and played on neutral soil, in Sudan. The result was different too, with Algeria winning 1-0.

“We are very emotional in the way we support; so one day we hate the team, the other day we love the team. We can criticise our team and players, but we don’t like other people criticising them.”

“We tend to flip on our team and our players in a heartbeat the moment things aren’t going to our liking,” adds Hamdy. The main reason behind this phenomenon, as Assem explains, is that “Egypt’s only footballing identity is winning.”

This love-hate relationship isn’t restricted to the national team, though, and can be seen among the majority of the fans of the two biggest clubs in the country — Al Ahly and El Zamalek, both based in Cairo. Yet, it’s more love than hate.

Al Ahly supporters during a CAF Champions League quarter-final against Mamelodi Sundowns in 2020 (Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images)

What Egyptians do or say in the heat of the moment is usually not reflective of their true feelings. It’s why they are still religiously following their clubs despite the limits on attendances in the past 14 years, after the Port Said Stadium riot in February 2012 and the tragic events at the gates of Cairo’s 30 June Stadium in February 2015, when more than 20 people lost their lives. It’s why they always go back to support the national team, regardless of their performance.

In the hearts of many Egyptians, football is an eternal flame that is affected by the ongoing situation, but one that never goes out. It is deeply embedded in the day-to-day life of Egyptian society.

“Egyptian football is everywhere — in the cafes, on the streets and the lingo,” says Assem. “For a very long time, Egyptians used to call a stranger, ‘Captain’ or ‘Coach’. If someone is performing well at his job, he is called a ‘ferwed’, which comes from the football word ‘forward’.”

Even those who were born and raised abroad have the bug. Hosam, who is 43 years old and lives in the United States — but regularly travels to Egypt — fell in love with football because of the U.S.-hosted 1994 World Cup. However, he felt something was missing because Egypt were not at that tournament.

“I follow the club scene closely, but I haven’t had that same feeling towards a club like I do with the national team,” he says.

This meant hours of trying to find a way to watch Egypt’s matches at a time when African football wasn’t very accessible, waking up at ridiculous hours due to the time difference, and occasionally skipping classes to be able to watch the games.

The Egyptian diaspora in the U.S. and Canada will be keen on attending Egypt’s matches at this World Cup. “We are everywhere — just because it’s going to be in Vancouver or Seattle doesn’t mean there won’t be fans,” says El Derini. “We are proud and we are loud, and we just want to have a good time.”

“You’ll see the trademark Egyptian warmth and friendliness,” adds Hosam. “Maybe a little bit of naive optimism, too.”

However, for the majority living in Egypt, a trip to World Cup 2026 is not feasible logistically because of ticket prices and the required visas, which means that only a relatively small number of fans from back home will be present.

“We don’t have enough representation in other countries,” says Omar. “They only see us at tournaments, where only part of the real fan culture is present due to logistics.”

“I advise people if they want to unearth the soul of Egyptian football, they have to travel to Egypt,” adds Assem. “The main event isn’t in the World Cup cities, it’s in the Egyptian governorates.”

For Hamdy, it’s an easier cross-country trip to Seattle, where Egypt will play two of their group-stage matches. “My daughter is 15, I am trying to take her to our first Egypt match together, the way my father took me to Egypt matches when I was younger,” he says.

It is 37 years since that World Cup play-off decider against Algeria in Cairo, and throughout that time, the chant of “Masr! Masr! Masr!” has never gone away.

Even if Egyptians will not be travelling en masse to this World Cup, it should still be audible when they take on Belgium, New Zealand and (at the moment) Iran plus any knockout-phase matches beyond that.

A fraction of 100 million isn’t a bad number.

The Language of Soccer series is sponsored by Google.

The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Sponsors have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.