Even though Luis Enrique is still the head coach at Paris Saint-Germain, he was not always safe in his job last season. PSG’s performance in the Champions League was inconsistent, which led to the club being closely examined. The difference between success and failure was very small. This has made Ferrari boss Frédéric Vasseur think about the difference between football management and leadership in Formula 1. He thinks this comparison is often wrong.
Vasseur is a big football fan and a big supporter of PSG. He spoke to about the pressures he has faced at Scuderia Ferrari and why they are not the same as the pressures faced by a football coach.
Luis Enrique is a great example of how football is a very competitive sport
Vasseur said that Luis Enrique is a great example of how things can change really quickly in elite football. Last season, PSG’s progress in the Champions League was closely tied to moments that could easily have gone the other way, especially in knockout matches where the smallest details mattered.
“Luis Enrique is a hero today, but he could just as easily have been sacked,” Vasseur explained.
He thinks that football managers often have a reputation for doing one good thing, but not for doing lots of good things over a long period of time. If a coach makes a mistake, like missing a penalty, the way the referee handles it can make people see the coach in a different light.
Vasseur mentioned PSG’s exciting tie against Liverpool, which was decided by the narrowest of margins in a penalty shootout.
“It came down to a millimetre,” he said, showing that these moments can decide if a manager keeps their job, even if the team is doing well overall or if they have a good plan.
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Even though there is a lot of pressure from the public, Vasseur says that managing a Formula 1 team is very different from coaching a football team. The Ferrari boss says that in football, a new manager can make an impact straight away. But in Formula 1, you have to be patient and commit for the long term.
“Is the job of a Formula 1 team boss similar to that of a football coach? I don’t think so,” Vasseur said.
“It’s much harder for them.”
He said that football coaches can quickly change their teams through player transfers and changes in how they play. But Formula 1 team managers have to wait for long periods of time for new technical and organisational strategies.
In Formula 1, it takes years to see results from changes to the team, its culture and its infrastructure, not weeks or months. The development of cars, the rules they must follow and the company’s own processes can make it easy to make the wrong decision.
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Vasseur comments on his own tenuous situation at Ferrari
Vasseur also compared this to his own situation at Ferrari, where expectations are always high and people are not very patient if things don’t go well.
Perhaps hoping that his pay master, Ferrari CEO John Elkann, might be a regular reader of the French newspaper L’Équipe, the French Ferrari boss was very keen to point out that since he took charge in 2023, he has made big changes to the way the company works, including hiring new technical staff and changing how the company is organised.
But the good things about these decisions don’t happen straight away.
“I’m still waiting for the people I recruited when I arrived in 2023,” Vasseur said, showing that it takes time for decisions to have an effect.
He said that this makes leadership in Formula 1 really difficult. Unlike football, where a new coach can quickly change results, F1 needs people to believe in a long-term plan, even when there is a lot of criticism.
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Vasseur’s comments highlight a key point about today’s elite sports: success and failure can be very close, but each sport should be judged differently. Football is all about the immediate and the emotional, while Formula 1 is all about stability, continuity and planning for the long-term, perhaps not you’re Ferrari!
When talking about Luis Enrique’s uncertain position at PSG, Vasseur wasn’t criticising the Spanish coach. Instead, he was showing that a coach’s reputation can be damaged if the results of a game depend on things they can’t control. In Formula 1, he believes that it’s important to resist change, even when there’s a lot of pressure to get results straight away.
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Despite all his foibles, Marko will be missed by the media in particular, given Helmut had a penchant for saying completely the wrong thing at the wrong time. In 2020 he was reported as having the belief that Red Bull’s drivers should try to get infected with the Covid-19 virus before the start of the season so they could quickly recover and develop immunity.
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Thiago Treze is a Brazilian motorsport writer at TJ13 with a background in sports journalism and broadcast media, alongside an academic foundation in engineering with a focus on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). This combination of technical knowledge and editorial experience allows Thiago to approach Formula 1 from both a performance and narrative perspective.
At TJ13, Treze covers driver performance, career developments, and key storylines across the Formula 1 grid, while also analysing the technical factors that influence competitiveness. This includes aerodynamic development trends, simulation-driven design approaches, and the engineering decisions that shape race weekend outcomes.
His reporting bridges the gap between human performance and machine development, helping readers understand how driver execution and technical innovation interact in modern Formula 1. Coverage often connects on-track events with the underlying engineering philosophies that define each team’s approach.
With a global perspective shaped by both journalism and technical study, Thiago also focuses on Formula 1’s international reach and the different ways the sport is experienced across regions.
Treze has a particular interest in how Computational Fluid Dynamics and aerodynamic modelling contribute to car performance, offering accessible explanations of complex technical concepts within Formula 1.
