There are a million reasons why the World Cup is the greatest sporting event on Earth, and one of those reasons is that it's the rare setting in which soccer managers can be forced to eat some shit.
American sports fans are spoiled by the traditional press conference. Yes, most press conferences are a waste of time and feature obsequious beat reporters lobbing easy questions at the coaches of the teams they cover, but there still exists in this country an impulse toward challenging a coach's thinking when the moment calls for it. If some bozo called for a field goal when he should have gone for it on fourth down, or left his starter out there too long, or or drew up a horrible ATO with the game on the line, he's at least going to be asked to explain himself after the game. If we get lucky, he may even get pissed and start yelling.
Mick Cronin moments are harder to come by for the European soccer fan. If you're a fan of a Premier League team, for example, the only times you get to hear the manager speak are during a mid-week press conference that largely exists to provide injury updates, and during a brief post-match interview that is conducted by a single questioner who often works for the team. This can be a maddening experience, especially if your team sucks and you want someone to ask the dingus running the show why he keeps insisting on trying to turn a slow-footed full back into a wingback.
The World Cup offers a corrective to this experience, because it is the rare event that puts managers on a dais in front of an entire international press corps. More than that, it puts them in front of reporters from back home who are tasked with channeling all of the angst that an entire country feels following a World Cup exit. It is possibly unfair that national team managers, who spend years working in relative anonymity assembling their squads and installing their philosophies, end up being judged by just a few results in a high-variance tournament setting. And yet it is thrilling, every four years, to see managers who are used to receiving questions no tougher than, "Any fitness updates for us this week?" finally get mad-dogged a little bit.
After last night's knockout-round loss to Morocco, it was Dutch manager Ronald Koeman's ass in the jackpot. You could hear the knives sharpening as the game was going on, not only because his tenure as the Netherlands manager has been uninspiring overall, but because of the way he set up his team to face Morocco. Koeman opted to put five defenders on the field, and throughout the game seemed content to let his team sit back and absorb pressure from Morocco, who only grew more confident and dangerous as the game went on. Zlatan Ibrahimovic more or less called Koeman a traitor to Dutch soccer during the halftime and postgame shows on Fox, and even Koeman's own players were obviously annoyed by his negative tactics.
After the game, Koeman sat down for a press conference and got to experience what it's like to be Mike McCarthy every day. A Dutch reporter bluntly asked him why he hadn't already submitted his resignation to the Dutch football association. Koeman then spent the rest of the press conference defending his tactics. He was even forced to dust off the all you haters just sit on the sidelines defense. From The Guardian:
"You can think whatever you like but we gave away much less against a team that was stronger than [group stage opponents] Sweden and Tunisia," he said. "If I had to do it again I'd do it all the same way. As the Dutch coach when the equalizer is scored I am always going to be scolded for the fact I chose five defenders.
"But you criticize, which is your right. You watch from the sidelines, I'm here with the team and, once again, I'd do it again."
German national team coach Julian Nagelsmann was also asked about a possible resignation following his team's shocking loss to Paraguay, and he ended up sounding like an embattled Big 10 coach who just lost his rivalry game for the third consecutive season. From The Athletic:
"I won't step down," Nagelsmann told reporters at full time. "If the [federation] wants me to continue, I'll continue, but I know how the industry works. I know a lot of people will want me to leave now but I'll continue if the DFB wants me to stay.
"If we were to do a survey in Germany today, the German people wouldn't speak very positively about me. We haven't done much in this tournament for people to celebrate. I know that not everyone in Germany will agree with me staying on."
The other nice thing about the World Cup is that you get exposure to the specific ways in which other countries handle recrimination season. The Dutch and Germans seem to favor blunt resignation requests, but so far nobody at the tournament has rivaled the performance of the South Korean press corps. Following his team's 1-0 loss to South Africa in the group stage, South Korean manager Hong Myung-bo was asked by a reporter from the Korean Broadcasting System if the team had been "collectively food-poisoned." Otherwise, the reporter pointed out, "this was not an unacceptable performance by any standard.”
Hong would end up resigning from his post following South Korea's failure to advance beyond the group stage, just a few hours after South Korean president Lee Jae Myung issued an official apology to the nation for the national team's poor performance, and blamed the team's downfall on "incompetent people" being appointed to leadership positions.
So there's one reason for Koeman to keep his chin up. He might be despised by the whole of the Netherlands right now, but at least the country's Prime Minister has yet to declare Koeman's employment "een serieus probleem."
