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Published : 16 Jun 2026, 09:47 PM
Sabri Lamouchi’s dismissal as Tunisia coach after a single game at the World Cup places him on an ignominious list that includes one of the most successful coaches in tournament history.
Former France international Lamouchi was sacked on Monday after Tunisia were hammered 5-1 by Sweden in their opening game.
He had only been appointed in January, replacing Sami Trabelsi, who was unceremoniously fired after the North African country’s elimination at the last-16 stage of the Africa Cup finals in Morocco.
Tunisia also fired Henryk Kasperczak two matches into the 1998 World Cup in France, after losing to England and Colombia. Ali Selmi took charge of their last game, where they held Romania to a 1-1 draw in Paris.
At the same tournament in 1998, Carlos Alberto Parreira was fired by Saudi Arabia and Cha Bum-kun by South Korea.
Brazilian Parreira also sits on the most illustrious list of World Cup achievements. He holds the record for coaching at the most World Cups and only four years before the Saudis sent him packing after two games at the 1998 finals, he had led Brazil to the title in the 1994 tournament in the United States.
Lame Duck After Player Mutiny
In 1954, Scotland’s manager Andy Beattie resigned after their opening match of the tournament in Switzerland, where they lost to Austria, while France coach Raymond Domenech effectively played no part in his team’s final game at the 2010 finals, where they lost to South Africa in Bloemfontein.
It had been preceded by a player mutiny that left Domenech a lame duck on the touchline.
Ahead of the 2018 finals in Russia, Spain fired Julen Lopetegui some 48 hours before their opening game when it emerged he had negotiated to take over at Real Madrid after the tournament. Lopetegui is at the 2026 World Cup as coach of Qatar.
Tunisia have a long tradition of knee-jerk firing and did the same when they hosted the 1994 Cup of Nations finals, losing the opener in a shock 2-0 setback against Mali. Youssef Zouaoui was gone the next day and replaced by Faouzi Benzarti, who proved unable to help them into the next round.
Perhaps football’s most famous mid-tournament firing came at the Africa Cup of Nations in the Ivory Coast in early 2024 when Jean-Louis Gasset departed after a horror first round for the host nation, who only scraped through to the knockout stage as the last of the four best third-placed group finishers and suffered a shock 4-0 loss at the hands of tiny Equatorial Guineas.
His assistant Emerse Fae led an Ivorian revival that saw them go on and win the trophy in a fairytale-style comeback.
Tunisia's new coach for the current World Cup is fellow Frenchman Herve Renard.
