When employing a new member of staff in any organisation, it makes sense – and is the morally correct thing – to appoint the best, most qualified applicant.
Of course, there are some job roles where there’s a certain cultural sensitivity to the post, with the manager of the national football team seemingly one of them.
There are those who are vehement: the manager of the England national team should be an Englishman.
There are those who believe the best available candidate, regardless of their nationality, should get the job.
And then there’s a kind of middle ground: the best man or woman should be given the role, but only as long as they speak some English already in order to ease the transition.
Nice Tuch
Which brings us nicely to Thomas Tuchel, who will succeed Gareth Southgate as England manager. The German – a nationality which already makes him persona non grata to some – won the Champions League during an 18-month spell with Chelsea, as well as three titles in France and Germany.
Tuchel speaks fluent English too, and understands the country’s unique love for, and attitude towards, the beautiful game. If he was born in Cornwall, rather than Krumbach in West Germany, he would have been a shoe-in for the job.
But his lack of Englishness is simply a hurdle too high to jump for some fans and those in the media – or perhaps the fact that the England manager will be German is the real trigger for the outpouring of anger that has been forthcoming.
The other kernel of truth is that the preferred foreign candidates, such as Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp, simply didn’t want the job.
As far as the possible English candidates are concerned, the shortlist would have fit on the back of a postage stamp. Lee Carsley, the interim head coach following Southgate’s resignation, might have been a genuine contender….until the Three Lions suffered a humiliating defeat to Greece on his watch, that is.
Eddie Howe has taken the richest club in world football, Newcastle United, backwards, while Graham Potter hasn’t worked for 18 months after being sacked by Chelsea – that gap in his CV will not be able to be explained away using a Rodney Trotter style ‘I was away on safari’ excuse.
So you can see why the Football Association had such a tough job in appointing a successor to Southgate….they simply had no chance of pleasing everyone.
Tuchel will become England’s third foreign manager, following Sven Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello. But the question remains: should the head coach of England be English?
Using data from countries around the world, we look at whether the nationality of a manager has any bearing on the success of a nation on the major stage.
Who Is England’s Best Ever Manager?
How do we define success in international football?
Perhaps the only thing that really matters is silverware. If that’s true, then England have well and truly underwhelmed in major tournaments, with only one win – the 1966 World Cup – to show for the extraordinary amount of investment that has been pumped into the domestic game for the past century.
So, in that regard, we can anoint an Englishman – Sir Alf Ramsey – as the greatest manager in England’s history.
But there’s a challenge to judging managers, via the success of their team, in international football – particularly as they only get to compete in meaningful competition every two years in that World Cup-European Championship cycle (the Nations League, no matter how hard UEFA tries to convince you otherwise, is essentially a waste of time).
And there’s further difficulty in judging a manager of the performance of their team in straight, knockout style games. As anyone that has watched football before knows, games can be decided by moments of luck – or bad luck – just as much as they can by collective quality.
In that sense, maybe a more sensible metric for judging an England manager is consistency; how many major tournament quarter-finals (or beyond) did they reach?
In that spirit:
So, if you were using this particular metric to determine the best England manager of all time, you could argue that only Ramsey and Southgate did a better job than that lovable foreigner, Sven Goran Eriksson.
A cruder metric, but one that has some worth, is simple win ratio. Which permanent England manager has won the highest percentage of games that they took charge of?
Using this particular measure of success, Fabio Capello is England’s winning-most manager of all time. Indeed, the Three Lions only lost six of the 42 games played with the Italian at the helm, so it’s a shame he only got to manage the side in a single major tournament before resigning in 2012.
It’s not always the most pertinent metric – five of Capello’s 28 wins came against the combined might of Andorra (x2), Kazakhstan (x2) and Trinidad & Tobago, which works out at 18% or so of his total victories.
The numbers don’t account for the contextual fluxes of the England team, either. Anecdotally, Bobby Robson made a silk purse from a sow’s ear with the players at his disposal, while Sven wouldn’t go beyond the quarter-finals of a major tournament despite boasting the ‘golden generation’ of English talent: Lampard, Gerrard, Scholes, Beckham, Owen, Terry, Ferdinand, Cole and co.
But even so, using the measures detailed above, it’s clear that both Eriksson and Capello – England’s only two foreign managers until Tuchel’s appointment – both did a good job compared to many of the Englishmen that have tried, and largely failed, in the hotseat.
World Cup Winners
Isn’t it strange that football fans feel that it’s imperative that the manager of their national team hails from that particular country?
There’s no such issues in club football. Have you ever heard a Manchester City supporter bemoaning the appointment of Pep Guardiola, instead calling for a Mancunian to be given the job?
Should the Arsenal manager be an Englishman, or specifically a Londoner? Should Liverpool reject any managerial candidate from south of the Wirral?
There is no doubt that there’s a certain form of jingoism that applies to international football. But when we look at the data, is there good reason for such a domestically-minded approach?
In that vein, we’ve compiled a list of all the World Cup and European Championship winning teams dating back to the inaugural edition of the former in 1930. And then we looked at the nationality of their head coach: were they guided to victory by a manager from that country or a foreigner?
World Cup Winners to 2022
| Domestic Manager | Foreign Manager |
|---|---|
| 22 | 0 |
The numbers are undeniable! There have been 22 editions of the World Cup, at the time of writing, and the winning team at every single one has been coached by a manager of the same nationality.
Alberto Suppici gets underway; the Uruguayan becoming the first head coach to win the World Cup with his national team way back in 1930.
Then you have the remarkable achievements of Vittorio Pozzo, who remains the only manager to win two editions of the World Cup. He guided his Italian compatriots to glory in 1934 and 1938.
There was then the gap for the World War, before the tournament resumed – and so did the pattern – in 1950. Juan Lopez (Uruguay), Sepp Herberger (West Germany) and Vicente Feola (Brazil) coaching their respective nations to the Jules Rimet trophy over the course of the next three editions.
Brazil had a new head coach in place for the 1962 World Cup, but it made no difference: Aymore Moreira leading his nation to glory. And then four years later….well, England fans won’t need reminding that it was Sir Alf Ramsey that masterminded the Three Lions’ sole major tournament triumph.
A unique slice of history was made in 1970: Mario Zagallo became the first man to win the World Cup as both a player and a head coach, guiding an outstanding Brazil side to the trophy.
🏆🏆🏆✨#OnThisDay in 1970 🇧🇷 Brazil won a third star for their shirt, capping off their triumph with one of the greatest goals in #WorldCup history.@CBF_Futebol | @Hyundai_Global pic.twitter.com/CDSpDbFMfu
— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) June 21, 2019
The trend kept on rolling through the 1970s and throughout the eighties: Helmut Schon (West Germany, 1974), Cesar Luis Menotti (Argentina, 1978), Enzo Bearzot (Italy, 1982) and Carlos Bilardo (Argentina, 1986) all enjoying hero status in their home countries.
The 1990, 1994 and 1998 World Cup wins of West Germany, Brazil and France were masterminded by Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto Pereira and Aime Jacquet respectively, before the proud Brazilian, Luiz Felipe Scolari, completed his lifelong mission in football to win the World Cup with his home nation in 2002.
Marcelo Lippi introduced dogged conservatism in Italy’s 2006 triumph, while Vicente del Bosque let his fellow Spaniards cook on the pitch in their 2010 World Cup win. Joachim Low, not to enforce national stereotypes, turned Germany into a ruthlessly efficient force in 2014.
Two more domestic head coaches – Didier Deschamps and Lionel Scaloni – bring us right up to date courtesy of their World Cup victories with France and Argentina respectively.
🏆 WORLD CHAMPIONS 🏆
Argentina win the 2022 #FIFAWorldCup!
Congratulations on an incredible tournament, @Argentina 👏 pic.twitter.com/vasjzPbiw8
— FIFA (@FIFAcom) December 18, 2022
All of which leaves us with one salient, takeaway point: if England are to win the World Cup with Tuchel at the helm, they – and he – will have to overcome nearly a century of footballing history that says that they won’t.
Does that mean that England can’t win a World Cup with Tuchel in charge? Of course not. But it would go against one almighty trend.
European Champions
The pattern from the World Cup is overwhelming. But is the same true of one of the other major tournaments in international football: the European Championship?
European Championship Winners to 2024
| Domestic Manager | Foreign Manager |
|---|---|
| 16 | 1 |
Arise Otto Rehhagel: the only manager in history to win either the World Cup or the European Championships with a country other than their own!
The German presided over Greece’s extraordinary win at Euro 2004, where they bested France, the Czech Republic and Portugal in the knockout phase to land the most incredible big tournament win – at betting odds of 150/1, no less!
Otherwise, it has been a clean sweep for domestic managers guiding their home nation to glory at the Euros, starting with Gavriil Kachalin in the inaugural edition back in 1960 – he took the Soviet Union to what would be their only major tournament win.
Jose Villalonga (Spain, 1964) and Ferruccio Valcareggi (Italy, 1968) joined the party thereafter, before Helmut Schon created a slice of history in 1972: his win at the Euros with West Germany meant that he became the first head coach to win both the European Championship and the World Cup.
Vaclav Jezek masterminded Czechoslovakia’s shock triumph in 1976, before the football powerhouses of West Germany (coached by Jupp Derwall) and France (led by Michel Hidalgo) returned to the winner’s circle in 1980 and 1984 respectively.
The European Championships of 1988 were famous for the incredible performances of the Netherlands: Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit and all. Their Dutch head coach, Rinus Michels, is also considered to be the originator of the ‘total football’ style.
Like Czechoslovakia before them and Greece to come, Denmark shocked the world when they won the Euros in 1992 with their unique brand of conservative, hard-edged football. The architect? A great Dane in Richard Moller Nielsen.
Berti Vogts was at the helm for Germany’s success in England at Euro 96. He would later go on to manage Nigeria and Scotland, where his struggles would reveal the challenges facing a foreign manager at international level.
Roger Lemerre (France, 2000) and Luis Aragones (Spain, 2008) would sandwich Greece’s incredible win of 2004, before Spain backed up their triumph by going back-to-back in 2012: Vicente del Bosque joining Helmut Schon in the exclusive World Cup-European Championship winners’ club.
Fernando Santos led Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal to glory in 2016, before Roberto Mancini broke the hearts of England fans with victory in the Euro 2020 final with Italy.
And, bringing us bang up to date, is Luis de la Fuente, who guided his native Spain to the trophy at Euro 2024 – again, extending England’s long wait for a major trophy.
So can Tuchel be the man to finally end that hoodoo? The history books would suggest that, as a foreign head coach to the team he’s managing, it’s highly doubtful.
But then, these patterns are there to be ended….
Changing Mindset?
Would it be fair to say that we live in enlightened times these days?
That’s questionable, although you would think that attitudes towards having a foreign coach in charge of your country have eased somewhat – maybe one of the reasons that so many ‘home’ managers have won major tournaments is because all of the teams in the draw have had the same notion of domestic managerial bliss.
So, if we were to challenge the idea that mindsets have changed, we would look at the list of current international managers and expect to see a wide range of nationalities coaching countries other than their own, right?
Well, fire up FIFA’s world rankings, and this is the result:
- #1 – Argentina (Lionel Scaloni, Argentine)
- #2 – France (Didier Deschamps, French)
- #3 – Spain (Luis de la Fuente, Spanish)
- #4 – England (Thomas Tuchel, German)
- #5 – Brazil (Dorival Junior, Brazilian)
- #6 – Belgium (Domenico Tedesco, Italian)
- #7 – Netherlands (Ronald Koeman, Dutch)
- #8 – Portugal (Roberto Martinez, Spanish)
- #9 – Colombia (Nestor Lorenzo, Argentine)
- #10 – Italy (Luciano Spalletti, Italian)
According to FIFA’s rankings, four of the best ten teams in international football on the planet – England, Belgium, Portugal and Colombia – now all have an overseas head coach.
Between them, they’ll be hoping to finally end the near 100-year wait for a foreign head coach to win the World Cup with their team….although in England’s case, Tuchel and English football fans up and down the land would no doubt be delighted to win the Euros, too.