Sacked in the morning? The effect of within-season coach replacement in Swedish football

Sammanfattning: This paper examines the short-term effect on team performance after dismissing the head coach mid-season in the two highest football leagues in Sweden. The effect was assessed using a difference-in-differences estimation in which a treatment group is compared to a control group before and after the initiation of the treatment. On average the teams changing their coach improved their performance under the new coach, though compared to the control group no significant difference was found. However, some significant (10%- level) differences were found when separating the teams depending on which league they belong to, with a small positive effect for teams in Allsvenskan and a small negative effect for the teams in Superettan. Nonetheless, the overall conclusion from this analysis is that dismissing the coach mid-season does not have any substantial impact on team performance in the short-term.