Sabri Lamouchi and the unwanted record of being the first manager sacked after one World Cup game
“I cannot complain — look at where I am. I’m very positive, I’m here to try to enjoy this World Cup. It’s very tough, the pressure is high, the expectations from Tunisian fans are very high but they deserve it. I… will try not to complain for this one and not to think about the past or look forward to the future, but just enjoy the present.”
That was Sabri Lamouchi talking to the media the day before Tunisia’s opening game of the 2026 World Cup against Sweden.
He had been asked about his tough memories of previous World Cups: as a player, he was famously cut at the last minute from the France squad that went on to win in 1998, and as a coach his Ivory Coast team were knocked out in the first round in 2014 thanks to a 93rd-minute Greece penalty.
It’s no wonder he was keen to live in the moment. The trouble being that the moment didn’t last very long.
Barely 48 hours and five goals conceded later, the moment was over and the Frenchman had been sacked, replaced by Herve Renard.
Tunisia’s players look dejected after their 5-1 defeat by Sweden (Julio Cesar Aguilar/AFP via Getty Images)
The 5-1 defeat by Sweden was pretty catastrophic, a badly one-sided game that probably represented Tunisia’s best chance to get a victory in an extremely tough group, with games against Japan and the Netherlands to come.
But of all World Cups, this feels like the one where you can afford to lose your first game and still go through. On the face of things, dismissing a head coach after just one match feels like a catastrophic overreaction.
And yet, in some respects, it’s also not a massive shock.
The 54-year-old had only been in the job for five months, appointed in January to replace the man who had overseen their qualification for the tournament, Sami Trabelsi… who had himself only had the job for a year. Trabelsi was dismissed after a disappointing Africa Cup of Nations, when they won only one game and were knocked out in the round of 16 by Mali.
Lamouchi ruffled feathers straight away when he named an experimental squad for his first friendly, reasoning that he knew what the old guard could do and, as a new manager, he was trying out his own choices.
The assumption was that the reliable picks would return for the World Cup squad, but he sprung a surprise by leaving out captain Ferjani Sassi and defender Yassine Meriah, owners of more than 200 caps between them.
“These decisions were not easy; on the contrary, they were extremely difficult,” he said at the time, keen to reduce the average age of the squad and inject a little more vigour into his selection.
The early signs weren’t great. They beat Haiti in his first game but then drew 0-0 with Canada and lost 1-0 to Austria. The most concerning result came when they were beaten 5-0 by Belgium. “This match was a nightmare,” was his rallying cry immediately after that one.
And then the goals started flying in against Sweden.
“It’s a difficult loss. It’s painful,” Lamouchi told the media afterwards. “Starting the competition with this bad of a loss is indeed difficult. We made way too many mistakes. We have our pride. We need to react. We need to give a better image.”
Defender Omar Rekik wasn’t any more optimistic. “We need to look ourselves in the mirror,” he said. “Ten goals in two games is crazy. I want to say sorry to the Tunisian people. This is not good enough.”
With all that in mind, given the context of how Tunisia went into the tournament and the mood around the team, rather than this being a knee-jerk overreaction it starts to look a bit more like part of a pattern, something that ultimately was in the post.
So is this the first time something like this has happened, the first time a team has sacked a manager during a World Cup? It is not. In fact, it’s not even the first time this has happened to Tunisia.
They dispensed with Polish coach Henryk Kasperczak after two defeats at the 1998 World Cup, to England and Colombia, which felt especially harsh given they were only defeated 2-0 and 1-0. His replacement, Ali Selmi, took charge of their final group game against Romania and was himself sacked immediately afterwards.
Something strange was happening in 1998, because Kasperczak was one of three coaches to go after two games: Carlos Alberto Parreira, four years after winning the whole thing with Brazil, was dismissed as Saudi Arabia head coach, while Cha Bum-kun was out as South Korea manager too.
The difference between those three examples and this one is that in 1998 the coaches were dismissed after their teams had lost twice and were already eliminated. Tunisia still have two games to go and a win in one of them, unlikely as that appears right now, could well see them through as one of the best third-placed teams.
It’s an extraordinary state of affairs, with Renard appointed until the end of the tournament and given the task of attempting to salvage their campaign. For him, this is a World Cup reprieve, having been sacked himself by Saudi Arabia in April.
“I was obliged to do what I did to allow a new generation to gain confidence,” Lamouchi told World Soccer magazine before the tournament. “I hope I make the right decisions in terms of selection.”
The Tunisian decision-makers have answered that with some gusto. You’d forgive Lamouchi if he tried to never even think about the World Cup again.