Should football coaches wear a suit? The impact of skill and management structure on Serie A Clubs’ performance

This paper implements the methodology proposed by Bell et al. (2013) for the English Premier League to test the performance of football club coaches in the Italian Serie A, so as to explore the robustness of this approach to a different setup. Our results show that, over the seasons 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013- 14, only two coaches out of 49 outperform, three underperform, while the great majority performed as expected. It follows that conclusions about the appropriate sacking time are not easy and the final decision is determined by other circumstances. Although comparison with Premier League has to be taken with caution, our results show that, in the presence of the management structure and the tactical approach typical of Serie A, the model can pick up a few very extreme skill levels but it cannot differentiate among the great majority of coaches.