Why it matters that it doesn't matter who will replace Luis Enrique

In the next few weeks FC Barcelona officials will announce who will replace Luis Enrique Martínez as manager (head coach) of the soccer team, after he said recently that he would step down next season. Should fans be worried about this announcement? In other words, does it matter who will replace Luis Enrique? The best experts in the economics of soccer say no. Economist Stefan Szymanski usually argues that the identity of the manager does not significantly affect the performance of teams. Teams change their managers over time, but each team stays more or less constant in the rankings, basically depending on resources and fan base. Changes around the mean can be attributed more to randomness than to managers. It is just that managers provide a convenient narrative. When a manager is fired after a streak of bad results, the performance in the subsequent games is not statistically different to the performance of teams that experience a similar bad streak but that do not fire the manager. Of course some managers are better than others, but the difference does not have a significant statistical impact. It is just that as soccer consumers we also consume celebrity managers and managerial narratives. Last summer the narrative in England was that the English Premier League would be a big fight between the two biggest celebrity managers of the time, Guardiola and Mourinho. We all know now just some games before the end of the season, that the greatest national league in Europe will be won by Antonio Conte's Chelsea, and that the second will most probably be Pochettino's Tottenham. These two managers have a lower profile than Pep and the special one, but their teams have done better. Perhaps Guardiola and Mourinho achieved the status of celebrity managers because one of them managed the best set of players in history in Barcelona, and the other had access to the largest pay check in history when Abramovich arrived at Chelsea. Manchester City and Manchester United will not finish the season very differently from where they finished last season under much less glamorous managers. That includes performance in all competitions, with ManU perhaps replacing a victory in the FA Cup with a victory in the Europa League (to be seen). Whoever replaces Luis Enrique will have access to broadly the same set of players, the same amount of resources and the same fan base. Most probably Barça will be one of the two teams contesting the Spanish league and one of the best six to eight teams in Europe, as it has happened in last 30 years or so. Does it matter that this does not matter? Yes it does, because it shows the fallacy of great men. No doubt Obama is better than Trump and Macron better than Trump and Le Pen and Hollande, but leaders are endogenous, they are produced by social processes rather than being the engineers of these.