Tunisia makes shock World Cup decision after heavy Sweden loss

Tunisia fell 5-1 to Sweden in its 2026 FIFA World Cup opener on Sunday in Monterrey, Mexico.

The match was a disaster for the Tunisians — but its aftermath was far worse.

The Tunisian Football Federation, desperate to change its team's fortune, fired head coach Sabri Lamouchi mere hours after the final whistle blew. Lamouchi's dismissal leaves Tunisia without a coach for its final two World Cup group stage games, though it does intend to appoint Club Africain coach Mondher Kebaier as an interim leader for those matches against Japan and the Netherlands.

A difficult World Cup history

Nobody is "owed" a World Cup, but if anyone is, it's Lamouchi. The France-Tunisia dual national was one of the final players cut from coach Aime Jacquet's France squad before the 1998 tournament began. Lamouchi had to watch his teammates win the Cup for the first time — on home soil, no less — mere weeks after training with the team.

Lamouchi took over the Tunisia post in early 2026 after previous coach Sami Trabelsi was sacked for falling to 10-man Mali in the Africa Cup of Nations. He had precious little time to bring the team up to speed for the Cup — just four games, from which he managed one win, one draw and two losses — and that lack of preparation was evident when Tunisia took the field to open its tournament against Sweden.

"It’s a difficult loss. It's painful," Lamouchi said in the news conference after the 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, 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."

A bold — and often ineffective — strategy

Lamouchi isn't the first coach to be fired in the middle of a World Cup. In 1998, two coaches fell victim to the same fate: Tunisia manager Henryk Kasperczak and South Korea manager Cha Bum-kun both found themselves dismissed after two matches. In 2018, Spain coach Julen Lopetegui was fired just two days before his team's opening game after accepting a future post with Real Madrid. (That post, incidentally, only wound up lasting three months.) 

None of those teams were helped by losing their leader; Tunisia and South Korea both exited the tournament in the group stage and Spain, despite being a favorite for a deep run, found itself eliminated in the Round of 16 by host nation Russia.

But one nation — Cote d'Ivoire — leveraged a mid-tournament coaching change to perfection.

In the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, Cote d'Ivoire fired coach Jean-Louis Gasset after the group stage. The nation was in third place in its group and did not expect to advance to the knockout rounds based on its less-than-stellar record. But after several other African nations failed to secure the points they needed to eliminate Cote d'Ivoire, the team found itself in the knockout rounds anyway, now under the shock control of caretaker manager Emerse Fae.

Fae, a former Cote d'Ivoire player, got the players on his side and led the team all the way to the trophy. It was a remarkable turnaround — and it's the model Tunisia will attempt to follow at this World Cup.

Tunisia will continue its World Cup journey on Saturday against Japan in Monterrey, Mexico.