If there has been a worse performance in World Cup history than Tunisia's, be content. They still have one more chance to cement their place.
The Eagles of Carthage are already eliminated from the competition after failing to keep an audience against Japan last night somewhere along the Saturday/Sunday border, depending where you call home. But lots of teams get eliminated after two games; it is in the nature of the competition that this happens to the minnows of world football, like Haiti, and the surprisingly underachieving, like Turkiye.
But the Tunisians went out spectacularly even by the nature of early knockouts. Not only did they eat it against Sweden, 5-1, and eat it again to Japan, 4-0, but they fired their coach, Sabri Lamouchi, after the Swedish loss, and did nothing any better for the considerably more Love Island-ready replacement, Hervé Renard. Lamouchi, who'd had the job for five months, become the first-ever coach to get fired after only one game of a World Cup; three others have been binned after two, including Tunisia's Henryk Kasperczak, who like many national team coaches is not a citizen of the country he coached.
In other words, the Tunisians went full scapegoat and now, with one meaningless game left, have so far resisted the opportunity to do so again, though Renard is less likely to get a contract after this. And frankly, that is sufficient to mock the Tunisian officials for going cheap and easy. Or, more to the point, to mock them for not firing themselves.
Firing the coach is the laziest, most spineless and misdirected thing any organization can do, as it is proof if proof were needed that the people doing the hiring are more responsible for failure than the hiree. It can be properly concluded that in this case the Tunisian players were not up to the task presented to them, but is that a matter of coaching or roster construction, and if the latter, who picked these guys? Maybe this is just the zinc generation of Tunisian football, insofar as Lamouchi was only hired after they got rolled from the last Africa Cup of Nations at the round of 16.
In any event, we have a clear bias for coaches as opposed to administrators because administrators tend to comprehensively suck while coaches only occasionally suck. Fans think they can coach, but they know they can administrate, which is why it makes no sense for fire-the-coach chants when aiming higher is more accurate and satisfying.
It's why Defector doesn't have administrators but comrades who all know the words to the Internationale in French and English. We are all Edith Piaf, as we like to say at company picnics. And the Tunisians must be mocked for their knee-jerk operational skills, whether it be to the plucky Swedes or the pluckier Japanese. No wonder their Saturday/Sunday match got dumped into burglary hours. That was no way to make their countrymen enjoy their breakfast.
Anyway, we feel a hell of a lot better about Haiti, and even the Turks. At least they didn't turn on their own while everyone else was looking. Yet.
