Talk about a short leash

Tunisia manager Sabri Lamouchi is set to be fired after just one game at the World Cup, according to multiple reports. 

In the team’s first game of the World Cup on Sunday night, Tunisia faced off against Sweden and lost 5-1 in a shocking defeat. 

“It’s a difficult loss. It’s painful,” Lamouchi said to reporters post-game. “Starting the competition with ⁠this bad of a loss is indeed difficult.

“With world-class players that we have in the two Swedish forwards (Viktor Gyokeres and Alexander Isak), it’s something that you don’t recover from. We made way too many mistakes. We have our pride. We need to react. We need to give a better image.”

Sunday night’s game was supposed to be close, as Tunisia was one of the best teams in African World Cup qualifying. Their defense was seen as the best part of the team, something that did not show against Sweden. Goal differential is the second tiebreaker

In their qualifying group, they won nine of 10 games without allowing a single goal — the first team ever to do so. But that run was under a combination of different managers. 

Lamouchi took over after Tunisia’s loss in the round of 16 of AFCON 2026. He managed five games, winning just one, with his defense allowing 11 goals. 

Lamouchi’s most confusing decisions came in the most recent game.

He went with a 5-3-2 that he had never deployed in any of the pre-World Cup friendlies. Then, after calling up seven attacking players, he benched all of them, opting to play five defenders and five midfielders. 

This ultra-defensive lineup did not succeed at stopping Sweden, conceding two goals in the first half, and then the floodgates opened after the 59th minute as the team conceded three more goals. 

This was not the first time Tunisia fired its manager during a World Cup. Henryk Kasperczak was sacked after two games in the 1998 World Cup. 

Tunisian superfan Omar Belghith, a fan since 1998, told The Athletic that it was one of the worst defeats he has witnessed. 

“There were no tactics, no structure, and no identity — just chaos on the pitch,” Belghith said. “Players looked lost and completely out of position. The team started without a real striker. Every decision looked wrong from the first minute to the last.”

As of now, the interim manager to replace Lamouchi has not been decided, but that decision needs to be made soon, as Tunisia faces Japan in just six days.