Why Gav hasn't been reappointed at Atlético Madrid

By David Marsden · Hamburger SV

Fourteen of this season’s fifteen bottom-three decisions were straightforward. Atlético Madrid was not, and it’s my decision, so I owe everyone a full explanation.

Gav has not been reappointed. I take no pleasure in it. For a long time Gav was the life and soul of Top 100. He ran the World Club Cup, designed the old blog header, and was one of the most active managers we had. That is exactly why this season and last have been so disappointing.

What the rules say

The standard is the one we set out after Season 25 and wrote into section 3.1 this season: reappoint unless reappointing would be a clear and obvious error. The manager gets the benefit of the doubt.

Gav’s review found one clear and obvious error. His review score was 37.6 out of 100, below the line of 45 for Divisions 1 and 2:

	Score	Out of
Result against the strength of his squad	3	30
Track record over the last two seasons	12.1	20
Activity and contribution	7.5	30
Record and conduct	15	20
Total	37.6	100

With one error, the rules leave a second chance to the admin team, and a second chance needs a majority of the admin team’s votes. There wasn’t one, so under the rules Gav is not reappointed. I’ll be open about why I voted the way I did, though, because I’d have voted the same whatever the score.

On the pitch

Gav has managed Atlético Madrid for 17 seasons, since Season 12. He took over from Top 100 club building legend Doug Earle; Atlético was a team that had just finished 5th in Division 1 with the 10th strongest squad in Top 100. Gav spent his first 12 seasons in Division 1 and finished in the top half only three times. They went down in Season 23, and after five seasons in Division 2 they’ve now been relegated again, to Division 3.

The squad is very much Gav’s own: he’s had 17 seasons to build it. By last season it was only the 34th strongest in Top 100, down from 10th when he took over. This season Atlético finished eight places below where their squad’s strength said they should.

Off the pitch

The score only tells part of the story, and this is the part that decided it for me.

February: the second chance

In February, another manager accidentally turned down one of Gav’s friendly requests for the World Club Cup. Several managers messaged him, and he replied, happy to arrange the games. All Gav had to do was send the request again.

He refused. Several managers asked him to resend it or send a message, and he refused each time. He called the other manager a waster and gave him an offensive nickname. Then he announced he was going on strike: he would log in twice a week and stop playing the World Club Cup and the Youth Cup. The World Club Cup is mandatory. His price for playing the second leg was a 3-0 walkover in the first leg and a public apology.

I told him then that I’d had enough and he was out. In the end I didn’t follow through. He apologised, and I said the simplest thing was to arrange the games and move on. That was his second chance.

Since then

He did what he said he’d do. For the rest of last season and this, Gav has been deliberately inactive. Activity and contribution used to be his strongest part of the review. This season he entered none of the optional Top 100 competitions and helped with nothing.

That includes the Youth Cup. Atlético have one of the best youth teams in Top 100, twice Youth Shield winners in recent seasons, and Gav didn’t enter it. Like João at Sporting, he had a great youth team and chose not to play it.

When he did post on the newsfeed, it was usually to criticise Top 100 and how it’s run. He has posted negative comments about other managers and has repeatedly accused other managers of cheating without foundation. At times he has been abusive.

He hasn’t asked for his job back, or spoken to me about it at all. Instead he posted that he had decided to stay, again ignoring the rules. It isn’t a manager’s decision whether they’re reappointed.

Why it matters

We’ve been here before. After Season 25, João wasn’t reappointed at Sporting. João had taken Sporting from Division 3 obscurity to Division 1. He wasn’t reappointed because he didn’t meet the standards we expect of every manager: playing the mandatory competitions, responding to the admins, taking part in the community and setting his teams. We said then that those standards apply equally to everyone, with higher expectations for the managers of Division 1 and 2 clubs.

Gav’s case is very similar, and arguably worse. João built something at Sporting, and he talked to me about what was going on for him and responded graciously to the decision. Gav took a top Division 1 side down to Division 3, and he hasn’t spoken to me at all. Reappointing Gav after not reappointing João would mean the standards weren’t applied to everyone.

I’ve been here before with other managers who stopped playing by the rules. Reappointing a manager who has failed this badly, and who has made it clear more than once that he won’t follow the rules everyone else follows, sends the wrong message about what’s acceptable here.

I know Gav has friends in Top 100 and is popular. But we set out to stop appointing managers on popularity. It’s unfair on managers who are better, who are making an effort, and who deserve a chance more.

What happens now

Atlético Madrid is now vacant and will be filled through the vacancy round. Applications close on 10 November.

I hope Gav takes a break from a game world he hasn’t enjoyed this year, and I’d be glad to see the Gav of a few seasons ago again one day.

David Marsden, Top 100 game world owner