I raise you to First and I stay out: coaches without award after promotion

In the photograph, Manolo Preciado is above everyone. They carry it on their shoulders, with the shirt rolled up, the loose tie and that smile that does not need to be explained to Levantinism. It is the image of a coach who has just given something enormous back to his people. What the photo cannot tell is that the First Division bench that he has just conquered will not be for him.

There are coaches who did not continue after a promotion. Said like this, it seems like a statistical curiosity.. Until you stop at what it means: prepare a team, endure a championship, fulfill the objective and say goodbye just when the opportunity for which one has worked arrives. In football you can earn a place in the history of the club without keeping your place on Monday morning.

Not everyone was fired. There were contracts that were not renewed, negotiations that did not reach an agreement and separations announced by mutual agreement. It is worth distinguishing. What these stories share is something else: whoever got the promotion did not lead the team in the category they had just reached.

Manolo Preciado and Levante 2004: on shoulders towards a farewell

He 5 June 2004, Levante won in Jerez and returned to the First Division. They had passed 39 years since his last season in the top flight. They should not be confused with the 41 elapsed since the rise of 1963: They are two different expectations that are often mixed when remembering that afternoon.

The difference matters, but the magnitude is understood the same. Almost four decades are enough for a child to become an adult without seeing his team among the greats. That's why that match was not simply a favorable result.. It was the day when Levantinism could stop talking about Primera in the past tense..

Preciado's team came back with goals from Reggi and Rivera, the latter from a penalty. He Museo del Levante preserves the story of that afternoon, one of the central chapters of the history of granota promotions. The footballers were on the field; on the bench, a man who was going to remain forever in the memory of the club.

But staying in memory did not mean staying in front of the team. Levante decided not to renew Preciado, whose contract expired on 30 June. Bernd Schuster was chosen to lead the newly promoted team, just like UEFA collected the 18 June 2004. Preciado had led the team to the Second Division title. Not even that guaranteed continuity.

He left the most human detail himself. According to the chronicle of AS published on 19 June, He had sensed his departure on promotion day when he noticed absences in the locker room during the celebration.. The newspaper summarized its explanation with a devastating headline: "I knew I wouldn't continue on promotion day".

There is no need to invent what he thought in each hug.. What he said is enough to understand the contradiction. The stands celebrated the future and the coach was already finding signs that he would not be part of it. There are farewells that are announced at a press conference and others that begin well before.

Levante were relegated at the end of the following season, after Schuster also left and José Luis Oltra took over the final stretch. That does not show that with Preciado he would have been saved: that championship did not come to exist. What did happen was that the promotion technician did not have the opportunity to try it.

2004: the three promoted changed coaches

Preciado was not a solitary exception that summer. The other two teams that went up to First, Getafe and Numancia, They also released a technical. Three promotions and none of their coaches at the helm in the new category. It's hard to find a clearer way to explain how short a prize can last in this profession..

Joshua Uribe: open a door that another would cross

Josu Uribe led Getafe to its first promotion to Primera in 2004. It was not recovering a lost condition: was to go where the club had never been. However, that premiere had another coach. Quique Sánchez Flores occupied the position for the new season, as documented UEFA announcing its arrival.

The first promotion only happens once. The following ones can be just as exciting, but they no longer discover the territory. Uribe was united to that first time; Getafe's first lineup in the elite would be decided by another.

Quique Hernandez: There was no continuity in Soria either.

Quique Hernández achieved promotion with Numancia, but it didn't continue either. The one chosen for the First stage was Francisco López Alfaro, from Real Jaén. His appointment was recorded on 6 July 2004.

Three different clubs took the same path. This does not make their decisions identical nor does it allow them to be attributed a single cause.. Yes it leaves an uncomfortable question: if getting exactly what they asked for is not enough to continue, What can give you security on the bench??

Jokanovic and Watford: the promotion did not close the contract

In 2015, Slavisa Jokanovic took Watford to the Premier League. He did not continue after the talks to renew failed and was replaced by Quique Sánchez Flores. He FourFourTwo review of the club's coaches pick up that separation. It was not losing the position due to a bad streak: He finished his stage after achieving the great objective.

In a negotiation there are two parties and not all ruptures fit into the story of the mistreated hero.. But the result again produces strangeness: The promotion resolved the sporting future of the team without resolving the work future of the person who had directed it..

Darren Moore: from Wembley to separation in three weeks

Darren Moore's case has a necessary precision: Sheffield Wednesday promoted 2023 a la Championship, the second english category, not to the Premier. That didn't take away the excitement.. After coming back in the semi-finals in a tie that had started with a 4-0 against, the team won the Wembley final with a Josh Windass header at the end of extra time. The EFL chronicle keep that outcome.

He 19 June, three weeks later, Moore's departure was announced by mutual agreement, as reported Sky Sports. The formula matters: It is not advisable to simply convert it into a dismissal. Contrast matters too. There had barely been a month between lifting a trophy and ceasing to be the team's coach..

The stands remember in another way

A club is not obliged to renew forever someone who made it happy. There are budgets, disagreements and sports decisions that cannot be resolved with gratitude alone. Nor would it be fair to always judge the substitute as an intruder: he gets to do his job.

But football loses something when it counts these exits solely as market movements.. Behind a promotion there is a shared work that deserves to be recognized even when you decide to start another stage. You can change coaches without deleting the previous one from the story.

That's why it's worth going back to the figure of Manolo Preciado. There is no need to turn him into a saint or invent a last phrase for him. Just look at the photograph of Jerez again: people carry it on their shoulders. His contract was about to end., But what he had just achieved, no one could take it away from him..

The First Division bench went to someone else. That afternoon will remain yours.