Would a Pep Guardiola five-game slump get most American coaches fired?
Manchester City have been the dominant team of the past decade, claiming six of the last seven Premier League titles and becoming the first team to win four consecutive crowns.
Pep Guardiola’s team has crafted its reputation behind streaks of the triumphant kind, which makes his predicament of overseeing a stretch of increasing struggle all the more remarkable.
After a 4-0 loss to Tottenham Hotspur on the weekend, City has lost five straight games across all competitions. Guardiola had never seen anything like it during his time as a manager. He had never even lost three straight Premier League games.
That this recent spell falls when Guardiola has re-upped his contract, which was supposed to give confidence and security to the squad, adds another layer. Guardiola’s job isn’t at stake — not after all those seasons of glory — and City will be heavily favored to snap their skid on Tuesday against Feyenoord in the Champions League.
But it got us wondering whether the most prominent coaches in American soccer would survive similar downturns, albeit typically operating in different situations, with varying levels of expectation. How have coaches fared amid such slumps in American soccer? And what would it take for some of the highest-profile names in American soccer to get the sack?
Mauricio Pochettino, USMNT
Considering the United States men’s national team’s schedule over the next two years before the World Cup, it’s unlikely that even an improbable five-game losing streak would be enough for U.S. Soccer to walk away from its hefty investment in Pochettino.
Even a longer losing streak would stretch across months and avoid the sting attached to loss after loss stacked up in the congested club schedule.
There hasn’t been a five-game losing streak since 2007 — more on that below — but the U.S. went five games without a win in 2022, drawing with El Salvador, losing to Japan and drawing with Saudi Arabia in pre-World Cup friendlies and then opening up the tournament in Qatar with more draws against Wales and England. A win over Iran to advance to the knockouts all but ensured Gregg Berhalter would return as national team coach.
Berhalter losing three of five in 2019 was about as bad as it got in his tenure as the USMNT coach. The USMNT last lost five straight in 2007 under Bob Bradley, when a weakened squad lost all three group games at the Copa America in Venezuela before friendly defeats in Sweden and against Brazil in Chicago. Bradley was not fired after that streak and went on to coach the U.S. to the final of the Confederations Cup in 2009.
U.S. Soccer has shown it is willing to be patient through adversity in results or off-field challenges. That would probably be the case for Pochettino, too. It also tracks with the rest of CONCACAF. Jesse Marsch has a long leash with Canada, especially considering his early success and that he speaks about trying to build something for the long term. Of the three World Cup co-hosts, Mexico has been the quickest to push the button. Javier Aguirre would probably not survive five straight losses.
Emma Hayes, USWNT
In theory, a streak of this length would be a red-alert scenario for the USWNT.
It would be historic: since its first official game in 1985, the women’s national team has never lost four consecutive matches. When the team suffered three straight friendly defeats in 2022, it raised questions about the direction of the program under Vlatko Andonovski and was a harbinger of what was the team’s worst-ever showing at the following year’s World Cup, when they exited in the round of 16.
Yet it’s hard to imagine a five-game losing streak putting Hayes’ job status into serious question.
Hayes has started in the finest way imaginable. After just one camp, Hayes selected a capable squad and led the team to its first Olympic gold medal since 2012. Since then, she has chopped and changed a bit, giving players their first international caps in recent months.
In just under a week, the USWNT heads to Europe to face England and the Netherlands. Hayes’ squad is heavily rotated, with all three first-choice attackers (‘Triple Espresso’, or Trinity Rodman, Sophia Smith and Mallory Swanson) being given the camp off to recover. England are coming off a runner-up finish in the 2023 Women’s World Cup and the Netherlands made the quarterfinal, so losses to either would be understandable. Games against Colombia, Australia and Japan in the SheBelieves Cup will be tricky, too, especially if Hayes’ squad is similarly green.
It would be a shock to see the USMNT lose a majority of these five matchups, much less the entire set. But given the state of things and the low stakes around these scheduled fixtures, Hayes has a bounty of credit stored up, and would hardly face much pressure just yet.
MLS Coaches
In a league curated to ensure parity, every team is bound to suffer successive losses at some point. This season, seven teams found themselves mired in five-game losing streaks (considering only the regular season table, arguably the most damning kind of slump). With the MLS Cup playoffs entering their business end and the dust settled around 25 of the league’s 29 active teams, what did those streaks mean to the teams and coaches involved?
The longest slump was felt by Nashville SC, which suffered defeat in eight consecutive league matches from late June to late August. Concerningly, this was a team that had already fired its manager, as Gary Smith was shown the door in mid-May.
Instead, the first six losses came under interim coach Rumba Munthali, with B.J. Callaghan installed on July 22 before the Leagues Cup. If you count that competition, the streak extended to 10 losses: the first an outright defeat, and the second from a penalty-kick shootout. When the regular season resumed, Callaghan suffered another two losses before finally getting his first win, against Atlanta United on September 14.
Most other coaches remained in their posts until the end of the rough patch. Such was life for Peter Vermes, who saw Sporting Kansas City suffer a seven-game skid from April to June, respective six-game slumps for Chris Armas (Colorado Rapids), John Herdman (Toronto FC) and Eric Ramsay (Minnesota United) as well as a five-game losing streak under since departed Philadelphia Union boss Jim Curtin.
The sole exception where a team dismissed a coach mid-streak came from lowly San Jose, who went on to finish last in the league table. After a fourth consecutive loss in June, the Earthquakes called time on the Luchi Gonzalez era after just a year and a half. In their defense, San Jose had also lost 10 of their first 15 games before what proved to be that summer’s six-game losing streak, which extended into early July.
Javier Mascherano, Inter Miami
He hasn’t even been announced yet, but Mascherano at Miami will come soon enough, and Lionel Messi will begin a fresh season with his friend at the helm following Gerardo “Tata” Martino’s resignation.
The demands set by Miami owner Jorge Mas will be high. After the star-studded team cruised to the MLS Supporters Shield with 74 points, they crashed out of the postseason to ninth-seeded Atlanta United and will be fancied by many observers to go all the way in 2025.
But what if Mascherano was to begin his tenure with a shocking losing streak, especially if Messi was healthy and involved? Serious questions would be asked about whether this was indeed the right fit and if a swift change should be made.
No one predicts such an outcome, but as we have seen in Manchester, stranger things have happened.
Jurgen Klinsmann, USMNT
U.S. Soccer’s patience with coaches was evident for the last high-profile firing before Berhalter.
Klinsmann didn’t even get near five straight defeats — he was fired after failing to win in three straight games late in 2016 (a 1-1 friendly draw against New Zealand followed by a loss to Mexico at home in World Cup qualifying and a 4-0 walloping on the road in Costa Rica four days later).
U.S. Soccer had held firm despite multiple bad runs of form and warning signs of issues in the lead-up to final, fateful setbacks. Across the end of 2014 and the start of 2015, the U.S. won just two of 12 games in a run that began in the World Cup with a 2-2 draw with Portugal and carried drowsily forwards. It was finally snapped in April 2015 with a 2-0 win over Mexico, which sparked a six-game win streak.
Later in 2015, the U.S. lost to Jamaica in the Gold Cup semifinals and then lost in the third-place game on penalties to Panama. The U.S. followed that historically bad Gold Cup with a run of one win in five games, with losses to Brazil, Mexico and Costa Rica and a draw with Trinidad and Tobago broken up by a 6-1 win over Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Klinsmann survived those two runs, but the back-to-back losses in World Cup qualifying, and especially the way the team fell in Costa Rica, finally prompted U.S. Soccer leadership to make a change.
The U.S. didn’t dig out of its hole and failed to make the 2018 World Cup. There are two opposite lines of thinking: Klinsmann would have gotten them there, or U.S. Soccer making the move sooner would have prevented the disaster.
The reality of firing a coach: it can only be evaluated in hindsight.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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