A dismissal statement posted on the federation's Instagram account, then deleted an hour later. A replacement announced, Mondher Kebaier, then retracted just as quickly. In June 2026, while the Tunisian national team crashed out of the World Cup without a single point, the Tunisian Football Federation (FTF) offered the country another spectacle, broadcast live: that of its own disarray. The anger that followed wasn't aimed only at players or a scoreline. It was aimed at an institution, and behind it, at a way of governing.
It's that shift that deserves scrutiny. A sporting elimination gets absorbed. What played out that week is something else: the exposure of a body meant to represent the country, and which no longer manages to. Understanding it requires stepping off the pitch.
Four coaches in under two years
The facts first, calmly stated. Sabri Lamouchi, appointed on 14 January 2026, was dismissed after a single opening match, a 1-5 defeat to Sweden. He thus became the first coach ever officially removed while the 2026 World Cup was still under way. His successor, Hervé Renard, appointed on 15 June with a contract running through the end of the competition, would oversee only one match, a 0-4 loss to Japan, and mathematical elimination as early as matchday two.
Renard is the fourth coach in under two years. Before him, Sami Trabelsi, recalled in February 2025, was removed on 4 January 2026 after Tunisia's round-of-16 exit from the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations, against Mali. Then Lamouchi. Then Renard. Four men, four projects, in twenty-three months.
| Coach | Appointed | End of tenure |
|---|---|---|
| Sami Trabelsi | Recalled in February 2025 | Removed on 4 January 2026, after the round-of-16 exit from the 2025 AFCON against Mali |
| Sabri Lamouchi | Appointed on 14 January 2026 | Dismissed after a single opening match, a 1-5 defeat to Sweden |
| Hervé Renard | Appointed on 15 June 2026, contract running through the end of the competition | Oversaw a single match, a 0-4 defeat to Japan |
Columnist Hatem M'rad (Le Courrier de l'Atlas, Tunisia, 22 June 2026) sums up the pattern in one cutting line.
We recruit coaches the way we change shirts. — Hatem M'rad, Le Courrier de l'Atlas, 22 June 2026
This instability isn't a stroke of bad luck. It's the symptom of an institution that, lacking any direction, treats every failure as a crisis to be put out in a hurry, never as a problem to be understood. Firing someone becomes a way to show action is being taken. Acting and thinking, though, are not the same thing.
Amateurism as confession
The statement posted then deleted on Instagram, the replacement's name floated then withdrawn, form the most telling thread of this episode. A national federation, the body that speaks for the country on the world stage, hesitated in public, contradicted itself within hours, and let social media record its wavering.
The Tunisian press was not fooled. La Presse spoke of a "defensive collapse" and a "cruel disappointment." Le Quotidien ran a terse headline: "And it goes on." On Mosaïque FM, the call for the coach to go was matched by a call for those who had appointed him to go too, while the federation convened an emergency meeting and supporters demanded the resignation of the president and the executive board.
What's at stake here goes beyond a communications blunder. An institution is measured by its ability to hold a line, to stand by a decision, to protect its public word. When that word unravels live, it's the credibility of the whole body that shakes. The pitch delivered a sporting verdict; behind the scenes delivered an institutional one.
Money and governance
Accounts that flipped in two fiscal years
Behind the visible disorder, there are numbers. The FTF's accounts document an abrupt reversal. An investigation by Inkyfada (Tunisia, April 2025) details the swing: a surplus of 22 million dinars in the 2022-2023 fiscal year turned into a deficit of more than 8 million dinars by 2023-2024, with revenue down more than 40%. National television alone reportedly owes some 14 million dinars in broadcasting rights. A federation short on cash struggles to fund training, maintain facilities, or plan ahead.
Contested governance, changing faces
Added to this financial fragility is an older governance crisis. Wadie Jary, FTF president from 2012 to October 2023, was sentenced on 20 February 2025 to four years in prison for corruption (Jeune Afrique, 2025). His successor, Moez Nasri, elected in January 2025 and a former member of Jary's executive board, is widely seen as continuity rather than a break with the past. Under such conditions, it's hard to promise a credible renewal when the faces change but the system stays the same.
A structural problem with deep roots
The problem, in truth, is structural and runs deep. Clubs survive on the strength of their presidents' own pockets. Stadiums are crumbling. Academies, underfunded, fail to retain their best talents, who leave to train elsewhere, while Moroccan, Egyptian, Ivorian, or Senegalese footballing systems widen their lead. The national team is only the visible tip of this cracked structure. Changing the coach doesn't fix the foundations — a finding echoed elsewhere whenever a sector is waiting for an institutional wake-up call, as our stocktaking of Tunisia's environmental movements shows.
An anger that speaks to something else
Why football touches on national representation
It remains to understand why this elimination triggers such a sharp emotion, where other disappointments are simply forgotten. Football, in Tunisia as elsewhere in the Maghreb, isn't just entertainment. It's one of the rare spaces where a nation sees itself represented, named, defended on the world stage. When that representation fails, and especially when it fails amid chaos and improvisation, the public doesn't just receive a defeat. It receives the message that those who speak in its name aren't equal to the task.
This is where the subject stops being reserved for football fans. The question raised is that of trust in institutions, and of the distance between a people and those who represent it. No Tunisian woman can consider this question foreign to her, whether or not she follows the matches. It arises identically in other fields: when an administration makes a promise it doesn't keep, when an official decision is announced then denied, when officials succeed one another with no logic to be found. The football federation is nothing unique. It is a mirror, more exposed than others because it operates under the eye of the cameras — the same mirror La Sultane holds up, on other terrains, by dissecting a system in Gaza, Year Two or by revisiting the judicial scandal of the Dreyfus Affair.
Why women have reason to pay attention
Women have a particular reason to pay attention to this mirror. Distrust of institutions is never neutral. When a public body proves incapable of running its own house, it's also the state's capacity to protect, to arbitrate, to be held accountable that is called into doubt. And it is often women who depend most directly on institutions being taken seriously, in justice, in health, in access to rights. A society that grows used to watching its official bodies improvise in public grows used, imperceptibly, to expecting less of them.
What the verdict says
The group's third match, Tunisia against the Netherlands, was played on 26 June 2026. Its result ultimately mattered little. Whatever it was, that last match changed nothing essential. Elimination was already sealed by matchday two, and the diagnosis had in fact been made well before the World Cup even kicked off: financial deficit, contested governance, neglected youth development, chronic instability on the bench.
June's anger, then, is no passing outburst from disappointed fans. It is the expression, through the most popular channel there is, of a wider exasperation with institutions that no longer seem to answer to anyone. Football has this benefit: it makes visible, in a matter of days and before an entire country, what other dysfunctions take years to reveal. It remains to be seen whether this collective clear-sightedness will turn into lasting demands, or whether it will dissolve, like so much else, into resignation. The real question isn't who will be in charge for the next defeat. It's what a people is still entitled to expect from those who claim to represent it.
