Tunisia sack Lamouchi after 5-1 World Cup opener loss to Sweden

Tunisia’s World Cup campaign lurched from embarrassment to crisis in a single day, with Sabri Lamouchi removed after the team’s 5-1 defeat to Sweden in its opening match in Guadalupe, Mexico. The dismissal exposed a federation acting under pressure and raised a harder question than one bad result: whether Tunisia’s football hierarchy has built a structure capable of surviving elite tournament scrutiny at all.

In an Arabic statement posted on its Instagram account, the Tunisian Football Federation said, “An agreement has been officially reached to dismiss coach Sabri Lamouchi.” The federation said it was preparing to appoint Mondher Kebaier as interim coach for the rest of the tournament, an urgent pivot that suggested little appetite for patience after a loss that landed hard against the backdrop of Tunisia’s long-standing World Cup struggles.

Lamouchi’s exit came after only one game, a first in World Cup history that underlined the scale of the federation’s panic. The 54-year-old had been hired in January on a two-and-a-half-year contract, but the deal never had time to settle before the tournament exposed its fragility. Tunisia had already been hammered 5-0 by Belgium in a pre-tournament friendly on June 6, a result that should have forced a wider reckoning about preparation, selection and the team’s competitive readiness.

The timing matters because Tunisia still has two group matches left, against Japan on June 20 in the same stadium and the Netherlands on June 25 in Kansas City. Replacing a coach between fixtures may offer a short-term jolt, but it also suggests the federation is reaching for a scapegoat before confronting deeper problems: planning that did not hold under pressure, a squad that failed to respond, and a setup that has now burned through another coach with little to show for it.

Tunisia arrived at this World Cup as a seven-time participant and for the third tournament in a row, yet it has never advanced beyond the group stage. Lamouchi’s own résumé offered no guarantee of reversal, either: he previously coached Côte d’Ivoire at the 2014 World Cup, where that team also went out in the group stage. For Tunisia, the issue is no longer only one defeat to Sweden. It is whether another coaching change can mask a pattern of early exits, abrupt decisions and structural stagnation that has followed the national team across generations.