Why Leonardo Jardim and Monaco seem destined to part ways

Leonardo Jardim appears to be on his way out at Monaco. What happened, and where does he go next?

The reasons for Leonardo Jardim’s imminent exit from Monaco are clear. His side have won once all season and currently sit in Ligue 1’s relegation playoff spot, third from bottom in the table. And its underlying causes seem just as obvious — selling the club’s biggest assets season after season, poor finishing, bad luck and an over-reliance on Radamel Falcao.

Although their playing styles are markedly different and their class roots couldn’t be more contrasting, there are clear parallels between Jardim’s Monaco and Juergen Klopp’s Dortmund side. Put simply, you cannot keep losing your best players and continue to compete at the top level in the long-term.

Over the past year or so, Monaco have sold Benjamin Mendy, Bernardo Silva, Kylian Mbappe, Thomas Lemar and Fabinho. Given those players’ destinations — Manchester City, PSG, Atletico Madrid and Liverpool — it’s easy to see how keenly any team in world soccer would feel their absence.

There have been missteps in the transfer market as well. Young center-back Abdou Diallo was sold to Mainz for just €5 million in 2017, only to join Dortmund in the summer for six times that figure. And older heads such as Valere Germain and Joao Moutinho, whose experience could well have helped steady this stuttering young Monaco side, have been allowed to leave.

In addition, there’s no doubt Jardim’s side have endured some dreadful luck this season. Expected points (xPts) models look at how likely a club’s results have been based on the team’s performances.

This is useful, because it’s the best indicator we have — much better than the actual number of points a club has picked up — of a team’s future performances. So it’s an effective predictor of whether a side’s run of good form is going to continue, or if poor results are likely to improve.

It’s the reason that pretty much everyone in the soccer analytics community rightly predicted that both Manchester United and Schalke would struggle to match last season’s results this time around.

And by this measure, Monaco have had the worst luck of any side in the main five European leagues so far. On average, the chances they’ve created — and limited their opponents to — would have left them an eye-watering 6.92 points and 10 league places better off than they currently are.

Monaco’s xG’s numbers also demonstrate the side’s over-reliance on Falcao. While Falcao has enjoyed an impressive 6.32xG of chances this season, none of his teammates have even managed one-sixth of that figure. The shots p90 stats show that other Monaco players are making plenty of attempts on goal — but those are clearly tending to be poor quality chances.

So although Monaco are creating decent enough goalscoring opportunities overall, an unhealthy and disproportionate number of those chances are falling to Falcao. And while Falcao isn’t having a disastrous season, four goals in 653 minutes isn’t a dazzling return either, which is hitting the team hard.

Putting aside the reasons for Monaco’s current woes, there’s one clear favorite to replace Jardim: Thierry Henry, an irrefutably great player who spent the first half-decade of his professional career with the club.

While Henry’s former teammate, Patrick Vieira, has enjoyed had an uneven start to his European managerial career at Nice, two ex-colleagues have coached teams to the French title in recent years: Didier Deschamps at Marseille, and Laurent Blanc at PSG and, much more impressively, Bordeaux.

The issue of where Jardim will end up next is perhaps even more intriguing. At the age of only 44, he’s already won titles in three different countries, and there’s likely to be no shortage of offers for his services.

He’d be a natural choice for any of the big three of Benfica, Porto and Sporting in his native Portugal — he’s already coached the latter with distinction for a season — but will almost certainly set his sights higher.

Jardim could bide his time and wait for the ax to inevitably begin to fall in the Premier League, while in La Liga Valencia have endured an expectedly poor start after going into the season full of optimism. But his most likely destination at this time would seem to be Italy, where there are question marks over the futures of the coaches at Roma and both Milan clubs.