‘Head coach’ vs. ‘manager’: What’s the difference? Does it matter?

Who would be a football manager? Well, as it turns out, in the Premier League the answer is an increasing number of head coaches.

The difference between the job titles of ‘manager’ and ‘head coach’ may seem mere semantics at first glance, but events at Manchester United and Chelsea this month point to deeper structural problems that many clubs are now grappling with.

Both Ruben Amorim and Enzo Maresca chose to go public with frustrations they deemed as unnecessary interference from the infrastructure around them.

Maresca went first. In mid-December, after a routine 2-0 home win over Everton, which should have calmed the mood around Stamford Bridge, Maresca opted instead to ignite a fire by declaring the build-up “the worst 48 hours” of his tenure due to “a lack of support.”

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His working relationship with senior figures at the club quickly eroded, and Chelsea parted company with Maresca just 19 days later. We will never know for certain, but perhaps Amorim, increasingly disgruntled at United, was inspired by those events in west London.

The following day, Amorim hinted at internal issues at a prematch news conference before facing Leeds United and, after that game, launched a full-scale assault on his bosses, insisting he joined United to “be the manager, not the head coach.” Amorim was sacked the following morning.

Chelsea have since doubled down on their existing head coach model by appointing Liam Rosenior as Maresca’s successor, not least because of his experience working for the club’s owners, BlueCo, at their sister team, Strasbourg of France’s Ligue 1.

United’s next move seems less certain after they installed Michael Carrick as an interim boss before making a permanent appointment in the summer.

The club still appears stuck at the crossroads created by legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure in 2013, just as Arsenal were when Arsène Wenger left in 2018. They were the two most prominent exponents of the old model, which dictated that control comes at all costs for a manager. But what balance works best in 2026?

What’s the difference between ‘head coach’ and ‘manager’?

This isn’t a new problem. Ferguson and Wenger once sat on stage together at a League Managers’ Association (LMA) meeting, opining on how the pre-eminence they enjoyed was founded on controlling all aspects of their respective clubs. They were becoming increasingly isolated cases.

“The manager is the most important man at the club,” Wenger said. “If not, why do you sack the manager if it doesn’t go well?”

“Very good,” said Ferguson sitting alongside him, smiling.

Ferguson later praised then-Premier League bosses Alan Curbishley and Kevin Keegan for leaving their posts on “a point of principle,” specifically that West Ham and Newcastle United, respectively, were letting players leave against the wishes of their managers. That was in 2008.

The intervening 18 years have seen the power balance shift steadily away from autonomous managerial figures toward head coaches, who are expected to work within a structure which divides responsibilities, including scouting, recruitment, medical determinations and data analysis among several others. A manager is a visionary to whom everyone must answer. A head coach is more of a prominent cog within a larger machine.

In one clear example of the transformation in thinking, Arsenal appointed nine new department heads around the time of Wenger’s departure in 2018 and trebled the number of operations staff in three years.

Top Premier League clubs routinely arrive at away games with two team buses — the expanded support staff no longer fit onto one bus with the playing squad. Club doctors Stephen Lewis (Chelsea) and Zaf Iqbal (Arsenal) were even listed on the official teamsheet for Wednesday’s Carabao Cup semifinal first-leg clash at Stamford Bridge.

Where the boundaries are drawn for each member of this infrastructure is where the tension usually lies for a head coach.

Today, there are only five Premier League clubs employing someone whose official job title is ‘manager’: Arsenal, Everton, Manchester City, Crystal Palace and Leeds.

One of those is Mikel Arteta, but he is a unique case. He was appointed as Arsenal head coach in December 2019 — following Unai Emery’s unsuccessful attempt to operate within the club’s post-Wenger model — but then “promoted” to manager in September 2020 after winning the FA Cup a month earlier in a Covid-delayed season.

Arteta revealed last week that the plan to promote him was actually hatched before his Wembley triumph.

“It was in my house,” he said. “They came to me and started to propose the idea of what they thought and the way they wanted to structure the club. That was after probably five, six months in the job.

“They believed that and [I said] ‘this is where I think I can help, this is my vision, this is what I would do, this is how I see this project.’ I presented it, and from there we started all together to start to add value to those ideas.

“I didn’t demand it. I didn’t ask for it, and they believed it was the right thing to do. When you have a leader, which is ownership in this case — Stan [Kroenke] and Josh [Kroenke, representing owners Kroenke Sports Enterprises] — and Josh that is very close to us with clear alignment to all of us what he wants to do, how he wants to create that space for everybody, I think it is very easy to work like this.

“At the end, it is about the relationships and the people that we have from great teams with very different qualities. Sometimes, I have been more on certain things; when there is somebody who is much better than me on that, I let them do it. For me, the title doesn’t really reflect the way we operate daily.”

Although KSE is an American company, well-placed sources within football point to the increase in U.S. ownership — now 22 of the top 44 clubs comprising England’s top two leagues — as a contributing factor. They want their clubs to retain a stable, long-term identity of their own, impervious to the idiosyncrasies of the man in the dugout.

The modern-day trend certainly appears to be clubs seeking to establish an identity based on principles set by their own sporting infrastructure, rather than the shorter-term whims of a manager or head coach who is just passing through. The LMA published data last year suggesting the average tenure of a sacked manager is 1.42 years.

But there are signs head coaches are pushing back against this transient existence. Amorim and Maresca took internal tensions public while Tottenham Hotspur captain Cristian Romero broke ranks with an Instagram post that suggested the Spurs hierarchy “only show up when things are going well, to tell a few lies.”

It doesn’t help advocates of the head coach model that Arsenal under Arteta lead the Premier League from Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City and Aston Villa, who named Emery as head coach but whose influence is widely acknowledged to extend far beyond the limitations that title would suggest.

Finding the right fit

Supporters have protested against Chelsea’s BlueCo owners, who completed their takeover in 2022 and whose methods have frustrated head coaches of high pedigree before Maresca, including Thomas Tuchel and Mauricio Pochettino.

The appointment of Rosenior has emboldened critics, suggesting the owners want a “yes man” as head coach, willing to acquiesce to the specialists who operate separately to his immediate coaching staff.

Predictably, Rosenior pushed back on any such notion when speaking at his first Chelsea news conference.

“Being a head coach, you talk about football systems and tactics,” he said. “[But] that’s 10% of the job. The job is to create spirit, energy, a culture. It doesn’t matter if you’re called a head coach, manager or anything else. The job is the same. My job is to have a team that runs, fights for each other, that plays with spirit and quality. That’s what I’m going to focus on.”

Whatever the rights and wrongs of Chelsea’s strategy — which includes employing five sporting directors, an independent medical team whose advice on player load must be followed and regular technical feedback sessions for the head coach after every game — they know exactly what they want.

Multiple sources told ESPN that BlueCo had quickly identified Rosenior as a leading candidate among a small pool of options, ruling out higher-profile names almost immediately. The belief in their model is resolute and clear.

If anything, control has been tightened. Maresca brought six staff with him from Leicester City. Rosenior has three from Strasbourg — assistant Justin Walker, first-team coach Kalifa Cissé and analyst Ben Warner — while Calum McFarlane was promoted from Chelsea’s under-21s and goalkeeper coach Ben Roberts remains in post. Set-piece coach Bernardo Cueva was appointed independently from Maresca and stayed on. All six of Maresca’s staff left.

There seems to be less clarity at United. Even caretaker boss Darren Fletcher admitting that he called Ferguson for “his blessing” before accepting the temporary position smacked of a club still struggling to emerge from the shadow of its past. They didn’t appoint a director of football and technical director until 2021, and Amorim was the first man in the club’s history to be appointed “head coach” rather than “manager.”

However, club sources have told ESPN that director of football Jason Wilcox sees recruitment falling within his sphere of influence and has said publicly that he can’t help but “interfere” in what the head coach is doing. It is, at least from the outside, a confused picture.

Carrick has brought in two staff members for his five-month stint: ex-England No. 2 Steve Holland and Jonathan Woodgate, who worked under Carrick at Middlesbrough.

‘Manager’ is a title that’s earned

Recruitment is invariably a point of friction. Club sources told ESPN that Maresca wanted a center back last summer after Levi Colwill got injured but was told to find internal solutions.

Conversely, ESPN sources say Arteta fought hard and won a battle to sign Mikel Merino from Real Sociedad in 2024 despite others involved in recruitment casting doubt over his ability and transfer fee.

Tottenham are grappling with their own approach, appointing Fabio Paratici as co-sporting director alongside Johan Lange in October, only for Spurs to confirm on Wednesday that the former will leave next month to join Fiorentina.

Gone are the days when the chief scout — and wider scouting staff that followed — operated as close allies of the manager. Some head coaches now insist on bringing their own trusted recruitment staff, often as part of their initial appointment, because they want specialists who share their way of seeing the game. This guarantees the coach a voice early in the scouting process and keeps them closely involved in the club’s strategic thinking and player selection.

Sources working in recruitment say that even though power has gradually shifted away from the manager or head coach, cases where players are signed without that individual’s involvement remain extremely rare, to the point of being almost unheard of in a top-five league environment.

However, the level of power can change over time. If a sporting director signs off on a run of mediocre transfers, a head coach may use that to push for greater influence over recruitment. Equally, when a head coach is flavour of the month with successful results, some will take the opportunity to gain a greater say in squad building.

What matters initially are the job description and the powers laid out in the contract. Perhaps the conclusion is that head coaches who want to become managers have to go to great lengths to earn it.

Arsenal recognised they needed a cultural overhaul and believed in Arteta to deliver it. Guardiola earned it before he arrived as City’s whole football structure was tailored to lure him to the club. Emery has improved Villa to such a dramatic extent that the case for greater influence was almost impossible to ignore.

Maresca and Amorim chanced their arm and failed. They almost certainly won’t be the last.

Information from ESPN’s Rob Dawson and Tor-Kristian Karlsen contributed to this report.