If sport is to be held up as a meaningful example of how we live our lives, conduct ourselves and organise society, then the events of today in the world of football management deserve some scrutiny.

The decisions by Manchester United and Celtic to part ways with their managers are reflections of how modern sport treats leadership, pressure and responsibility, and of the self-fulfilling damage that short-term thinking can inflict over the longer period.

Both clubs carry extraordinary historical weight. They are not just sporting organisations but cultural institutions, bound up in identity, community and memory.

Every managerial appointment at Old Trafford or Celtic Park is framed as a chapter in a much longer story. That context matters because history amplifies expectations, compresses patience, and often distorts judgment.

At Manchester United, the dismissal of Rúben Amorim feels painfully familiar. Once again, a coach was recruited on the promise of philosophy, structure and renewal.

Clarity of Ideas

Amorim’s reputation was built on system-building, player development and clarity of ideas — precisely the attributes United have publicly said they crave after more than a decade of drift in the post Alex Ferguson era.

Yet he inherited a squad assembled across multiple regimes, an environment shaped by constant scrutiny, and a club still negotiating what it actually wants to be. In that context, short-term turbulence was not just possible but predictable. To remove the manager before coherence could realistically emerge risks reinforcing the very instability the club claims it wants to escape.

Celtic’s decision to move on from Wilfried Nancy carries its own, distinct symbolism, less than two months into his tenure. Nancy’s profile aligns with much of what modern sport claims to value: intelligent football, trust in players, emotional intelligence and long-term development. At a club that regularly speaks about its connection to community, identity and style, his appointment felt philosophically consistent.

But Celtic’s history is both its strength and its burden. Dominance is expected. Progress is assumed. Any deviation from the familiar rhythm of success is experienced not as a phase, but as failure.

In such an environment, context is often crowded out by urgency. Even thoughtful leadership can become expendable if it does not immediately align with the inherited standards set by decades of success.

 

 

This is where the damage begins.

Sport regularly positions itself as a teacher of values. We encourage participation because it builds resilience, teamwork and perseverance. We point to elite sport as a model of accountability and performance under pressure. But when two of the most storied clubs in world football default so quickly to dismissal, the lesson taught is a different one: that leadership is conditional on the moment, and patience is negotiable only in victory.

The contradiction is stark. Both Manchester United and Celtic talk about culture. Both invoke history. Yet culture cannot be installed instantly, and history cannot be honoured without understanding how different the present is from the past. When managers are removed before ideas have time to embed, culture becomes a slogan rather than a practice.

There is also a practical cost. Frequent managerial change disrupts squads, stalls development pathways and encourages short-term decision-making.

Players learn to wait out systems rather than commit to them. Youth becomes risk. Innovation becomes optional. Over time, identity erodes, to be replaced by a cycle of reset and disappointment.

Troubling Signal

From a societal perspective, the signal is troubling. Sport is one of the most visible leadership laboratories we have. When it normalises rapid dismissal in response to challenge, it reinforces a broader narrative that failure is intolerable rather than instructive. That pressure must be escaped rather than managed. That progress is linear, not iterative.

None of this is to argue that managers should be immune from consequence. Elite sport is results-driven, and with privilege comes responsibility. Supporters invest emotionally, owners invest financially, and expectations are real. But accountability without context becomes volatility, and volatility is rarely a foundation for sustainable success.

From a Sport for Business perspective, the irony is hard to miss. In business, transformation is understood to take time. Strategy is measured in years, not weeks. Leaders are assessed on trajectory, decision-making and culture as much as on quarterly outcomes. Sport, despite its rhetoric, often denies itself that discipline.

The added weight of history at clubs like Manchester United and Celtic makes this even more acute. These institutions trade on legacy, yet behave in ways that undermine continuity. They invoke the past while acting in perpetual reaction to the present.

If sport is to continue to be held up as a force for good, a space where values are lived, not just marketed, then alignment between words and actions matters.

Every managerial sacking teaches a lesson. Right now, too often, the lesson is not how to lead through adversity, but how quickly even the most storied institutions lose their nerve when leadership is tested.

 

 

 

Image Credit: Sport for Business

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