Last week, Eddie Howe called time on his Newcastle United tenure – a luxury that not many managers get these days.
Even the best among them face the sack: since Sir Alex Ferguson retired at the top of the game with a Premier League title, five championship-winning bosses have been sacked, including Claudio Ranieri (who achieved the impossible by winning the league) and Arne Slot (who was employed by a club that famously gives a long leash to their managers).
Even the likes of Sir Bobby Robson, Jose Mourinho and Marcelo Bielsa have been utterly adored in English football by fans of Newcastle United, Chelsea and Leeds United respectively, with each of them forced out of their roles.
The elite club of managers to have NEVER been sacked
When you’re the best, you often get to leave on your terms – and there’s no finer example than Pep Guardiola, who stepped aside from Manchester City of his own accord earlier this summer.
Of course, the Catalan did the same thing at Bayern Munich to take the City job, and was a rare case of a Barcelona manager choosing to leave himself, after four years of winning everything in the game at Camp Nou.
Jurgen Klopp, meanwhile, has technically left his last four jobs: recently swapping his advisory role at Red Bull for the German national team, just a couple of years on from amicably splitting from Anfield.
Despite a tricky final season at Borussia Dortmund, he had enough credit in the bank to choose to go himself, while in 2008, a 40-year-old Klopp resigned from Mainz 05, after failing to secure promotion.
Howe’s career shows something similar, with his Newcastle departure mirroring his Bournemouth exit of 2020, after the Cherries failed to secure survival on the final day of the season in lockdown.
Remarkably though, Howe has never been sacked: in 2012, he explained the “personal reasons” that had led him to resign at Burnley and return to Dean Court, less than two years after the Clarets had agreed compensation to hire Howe at Turf Moor.
It’s fitting to remember the recently passed Kevin Keegan, too, while talking about those never sacked.
In 1997, Keegan took the bold step of stating he had taken Newcastle as far as he possibly could, before taking the Fulham job later that year.
Keegan would be in charge in West London for two years, eventually stepping aside when the England job became available in 1999 – but despite the disaster of Euro 2000, he actually quit himself, infamously resigning in the tunnel months later, following a 1-0 loss to Germany.
He would retire from management in 2005 at Man City, and in 2008, he resigned from a second stint at St. James’ Park over disagreements with his employers. Truly, an anomaly in the modern game.
Can you think of any other elite managers who were never sacked? Let us know in the comments…