​The World Cup, by its very design, produces far more losers than winners. One team will celebrate a title, a few others will exceed expectations, but the vast majority will regard their tournament as a disappointment. This edition has intensified that sting for the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, and Brazil with early exits, while teams such as Uruguay, South Korea, and Tunisia had hoped to do more than merely reach the group stage.
The emotional weather around national teams can shift with remarkable speed. Darko Jekuac, a professor of sport psychology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, told Front Office Sports that Germany’s promising start—two wins in their opening matches—fueled a buoyant national mood that quickly collapsed into dismay and anger after their penalty shootout defeat to Paraguay. “It was really surprising how fast the emotions and sentiment of the supporters changed,” he said.
Anger often leads to a demand for consequences for failure. The most common remedy is to dismiss the coach, a tactic that remains prevalent in 2026; Germany removed Julian Nagelsmann, just as Tunisia parted ways with Sabri Lamouchi after their first game. Others resign before they can be pushed, such as Uruguay’s Marcelo Bielsa, the Netherlands’ Ronald Koeman, and South Korea’s Hong Myung-Bo.
There is a compelling psychological rationale behind placing the blame on the coach. “National associations come under enormous pressure from the public and the media to demonstrate that they have grasped the seriousness of the failure,” Jekuac explains. “Since the coach is the most visible figure within the system, firing him becomes the quickest way to show action and accountability.”
Sometimes the friction between coach and players becomes irreconcilable. The most infamous case is the rift within Raymond Domenech’s French squad at the 2010 World Cup, the topic of the recent Netflix documentary The Bus. Domenech, an analytically rigorous coach who lacked interpersonal skills, sent Nicolas Anelka home for insubordination, an action that sparked a players’ strike. France later lost two of their three games and finished bottom of their group.
Yet sacking the coach is often a snap judgment made with imperfect information. In South Korea, Myung-Bo had been something of a national hero for leading the country to the semifinals in 2002 as a player and then guiding Ulsan to consecutive league titles as a coach. Under his stewardship for this World Cup, South Korea cruised through qualifying, beat Czechia, narrowly lost to Mexico at the Azteca, and were eliminated in the group stage after a lackluster showing against South Africa. Myung-Bo has since been dismissed by the national association and criticized by the president.
His fate is a stark example of what Simon Chadwick—speaking as a scholar of sport—calls the “scapegoat culture” that pervades soccer. In this framework, the coach becomes the most convenient target for broader failures, a move that many observers argue sacrifices nuance for speed, and accountability for political theater. As fans and officials search for meaning in a disappointing campaign, the impulse to attribute blame to the coach remains a recurring, if not overused, reflex.