With Liam Rosenior’s reported £24 million pay-out following his Chelsea sacking, the Daily Star takes a look at the biggest pay-outs ever received by managers handed their P45s
Whether it was Roman Abramovic and is itchy trigger finger, or the boffins at BlueCo with their endless spreadsheets, there’s nothing the ownership at Chelsea football club like more than a good managerial sacking.
With poor old Liam Rosenior getting the boot after a dismal five game winless run, the Blues are now on to 24 managers in the last two decades, with interim Callum McFarlane the latest to be given a run at the role following his announcement as interim.
But it’s not all doom and gloom for those handed their P45s by the unforgiving Chelsea hierarchy, with the club often forced to hand out massive pay-outs to gaffers on their way out.
Liam Rosenior’s reported £24 million payday as a result of getting the sack adds him to a list of several Blues head coaches that have receive eye-watering sums after having their contracts terminated.
Out of the Blue
No football club comes close to Chelsea in terms of money spent on firing managers, with six of the top 12 highest ever pay outs being awarded to Blues bosses.
Fees spent on paying out the contracts of just the sackings of Antonio Conte, Jose Mourinho, Luis Felipe Scolari, Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter and now Liam Rosenior have cost the club a combined total larger than the GDP of many countries, totalling at a a frankly ridiculous £111 million.
Tuchel and Potter reportedly set the Blues back £13 million a pop, while Scolari’s mega contract cost the club around million more than that.
Those three firings must have seemed like bargains compared to the likes of Conte in 2018 and Mourinho in 2007, who apparently received £26 million and £18 million respectively.
That Conte fee will mean that Liam Rosenior won’t even be able to celebrate receiving football’s biggest ever pay out, and will instead have to settle for second place between Conte in first and The Special One in third.
Parting Gifts
And it’s not just the Chelsea hierarchy that have had to pay the price of overzealous hiring and firing, with clubs and countries splashing hundreds of millions on pay-outs over the years.
Premier League rivals Manchester United are amongst the worst offenders when it comes to expensive dismissals, with recent gaffer Ruben Amorim reportedly receiving a £10 million payout after he was sacked this season.
And former Blues boss Jose Mourinho managed to eclipse his then-record fee for biggest pay out received when he was booted out of the Red Devils back in 2018.
The Portuguese coach picked up a frankly absurd £19.6 million after two years at the club.
Mourinho appears on the list a third time, with Spurs paying around £16 million to boot him out in 2021, paying Nuno Espirito Santo a similar amount the same year.
Outside of the Premier League, big money clubs like Paris Saint Germain and Real Madrid have also been known to dig deep into their pockets in order to remove unsuccessful managers.
Real Madrid reportedly paid around £9 million to get rid of Xabi Alonso this season, having paid a similar amount to prize him for Bayer Leverkusen just months before.
PSG’s record expenditure trumps that, with the Paris club spending a whopping £17 million on getting rid of French coach Laurent Blanc after several disappointing Champions League runs.
International Exile
While club managers form the bulk of costly pay-outs, some national teams that have used long, lucrative contracts to secure big name coaches have been forced to spend the big bucks when these appointments go wrong.
In 2024, former City manager Roberto Mancini was awarded a whopping £16.7 million after Saudi Arabia decided to move him on following a disappointing 2026 World Cup Qualifying campaign, while fellow Italian and ex-England head honcho Fabio Capello took home £13.4 million back in 2015 when the Russian football federation grew fed up of disappointing results.
Capello’s eye-watering wages caused controversy in Russia, with many criticising the coach for only being interest in the finances.
The nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky branding him “a thief”, while fellow MP Oleg Pakholkov described the Italian as knowing “very well he would achieve nothing with our team, but he simply decided it was a good way to make money, he wanted to hoover up bundles of cash for his retirement.”