Liverpool have parted company with Arne Slot after just two seasons in charge after the Dutchman fell short of defending the Premier League title he won during his debut campaign with the Reds.
With a once-dominant team seemingly disintegrating in front of him as the season rolled on, the 47-year-old was only able to oversee an underwhelming fifth-place finish in his second year at Anfield, leading to his dismissal on Saturday.
While it may seem callous to sack a manager almost exactly a year on from lifting a league title, Slot’s dismissal is hardly without precedent. Indeed, many of the top clubs across Europe’s big five leagues having pulled the plug on managers 12 months on (or sooner) after winning a league title over the course of the past two decades. Let’s take a look.
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Slot at Liverpool
Slot effectively continued Jürgen Klopp’s legacy at Anfield by delivering the Premier League title in 2024-25, winning the league by a 10-point margin. However, things gradually began to fall apart in the Dutchman’s second season in charge and a fifth-place finish (25 points off the top) coupled with underwhelming cup runs and a high-profile quarrel with departing hero Mohamed Salah appear to have sealed his fate.
Claudio Ranieri at Leicester City
Ranieri did the unthinkable at Leicester in 2015-16 when he took a team ranked as 5000-1 rank outsiders to the Premier League title. Powered by Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez and N’Golo Kanté, the Foxes defied the odds to emerge as champions of England. Ranieri then signed a four-year contract extension in August 2016 only for a disastrous run of form the following season (during which his side plummeted toward the relegation zone) to bring his once-glorious tenure to a premature end in February 2017.
Jose Mourinho (twice!) at Chelsea
No strangers to managerial churn, Chelsea have plenty of previous when it comes to sacking successful coaches.
Mourinho joined Chelsea in June 2004 and led them to Premier League titles in each of his first two seasons in charge, only to be sacked weeks into his third after making a somewhat indifferent start to the 2007-08 campaign (though his frayed relationship with then-owner Roman Abramovich was undoubtedly more of a factor).
The pugnacious Portuguese then suffered much the same fate on his prodigal return to Stamford Bridge in 2013-14. He guided Chelsea to the title once again upon arrival, only to lose his job seven months later following a dire start to the 2014-15 campaign; his side lost nine of their first 16 games and sank to 16th in the table, just one point about the relegation zone.
Roberto Mancini at Manchester City
Mancini will forever be remembered as the manager who delivered a historic and famously dramatic league title to Manchester City in the final seconds of the 2011-12 season — their first English league championship in 44 years. The Italian was then sacked a year to the day after that remarkable afternoon at the Etihad, being removed from his post two games before the end of the following campaign as City finished distant runners-up behind rivals Manchester United.
Antonio Conte at Chelsea
Conte lasted just two years at Chelsea despite winning the Premier League title in his maiden season and the FA Cup in his second. It all came to a head when a disappointing fifth-place finish in 2017-18, as well as a failure to progress beyond the round of 16 in the UEFA Champions League. That proved enough to persuade the Blues to part company with their manager.
Frank Rijkaard and Xavi Hernández at Barcelona
Rijkaard enjoyed an enormously successful start to his reign as Barcelona manager, winning LaLiga in 2004-05 and 2005-06 (as well as the Champions League in 2006). However,he was sacked by club president Joan Laporta at the tail end of the 2006-07 season in the wake of an embarrassing 4-1 defeat to Real Madrid that saw the Catalans consigned to a third-placed finish. The Dutchman was duly replaced by Barça B coach Pep Guardiola.
In much the same vein, Xavi replaced Ronaldo Koeman as Barça head coach in November 2021 and masterminded a resurgent LaLiga title win in 2022-23. But he too was sacked toward the end of the following season after Barça failed to win a trophy, with Hansi Flick brought in from Bayern Munich as his direct replacement.
Fabio Capello, Zinedine Zidane, Carlo Ancelotti and Mourinho at Real Madrid
Much like Chelsea, Real Madrid have a long and storied history of sacking ostensibly successful coaches, with some huge names paying the price of failing to match the Spanish giants’ incredibly lofty expectations.
Capello’s second stint at the Bernabéu (2006-07) was infamously curtailed just 11 days after he led Madrid to LaLiga glory after Los Blancos’ top brass decided his title-winning tactics were too negative. This came a decade after his first season-long spell had an almost identical trajectory.
Mourinho won LaLiga in 2011-12 but was sacked in May 2013 after falling 13 points behind eternal rivals Barcelona in the subsequent title race.
Zidane won a hatful of silverware over his two stints in charge at Real Madrid, though the LaLiga title he won during his second spell (in 2019-20) proved to be the last honour of his managerial career to date. The French icon left his post for the second time in in May 2021 after failing to win anything with the Spanish giants in 2020-21.
An eternally popular figure among players and fans, Ancelotti was asked to leave by Madrid for the second time in May 2025 despite winning league and European doubles in 2021-22 and 2023-24. The Italian duly accepted a position as head coach of the Brazil national team.
Max Allegri and Maurizio Sarri at Juventus
Allegri won five straight Serie A titles with Juventus between 2014 and 2019, though his first stint in charge at the Bianconeri came to a sudden end 27 days after securing the 2018-19 Scudetto when the club announced that Allegri would be stepping away at the end of the campaign. He was quickly replaced by Sarri.
Sarri then guided Juve to a ninth straight Serie A title during his sole season in charge, but was sacked just one year into a three-year contract after his side were punted out of the Champions League by Lyon in the round of 16. The decision to can the coach came mere weeks after the culmination of the campaign.
Julian Nagelsmann and Ancelotti at Bayern Munich
Ancelotti won the Bundesliga in his maiden season at Bayern but was sacked the following September after mounting a fairly patchy title defence that saw them trailing in third place in the table. A 3-0 humiliation by Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League group stage then sealed his fate.
After cutting his teeth at TSG Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig, Nagelsmann won the 2021-22 Bundesliga title with Bayern (the club’s 10th in a row) in his debut season only to find himself out of a job — some might say unfairly — in May 2023 with the defending champions poised just one point behind league leaders Borussia Dortmund in the subsequent title race. Thomas Tuchel took over and promptly won the title on goal difference.
Laurent Blanc, Mauricio Pochettino and Christophe Galtier at Paris Saint-Germain
Blanc won three straight titles in three years at PSG (among a clutch of other domestic cup competitions) but was unceremoniously sacked at end of 2015-16 season after crashing out of the Champions League at the quarterfinal stage.
The Parisians actually won a domestic quadruple during Blanc’s final season at the helm but a 3-2 aggregate defeat against Manchester City was too much to take for a club with their sights set on continental supremacy.
After coming close but ultimately falling short in his quest to win silverware at Tottenham Hotspur, Pochettino finally got his hands on a trophy or three with PSG, most notably the Ligue 1 title in 2021-22. He was then sacked after a total of just 18 months in charge, principally for failing to reach the quarterfinals of the Champions League.
Poch was quickly replaced by Galtier and history soon repeated itself. The former Lille coach winning the Ligue 1 title with PSG in 2022-23 by a single point, only to be relieved of his duties weeks after the culmination of the season.
