The players are familiar with the eternal debate about Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. But who is actually the best coach of all time? Who is the “GOAT”, the greatest of all time. The following article introduces the candidates and their successes and shows what speaks for and against each coach as the best of all time. The starting point is the number of titles, taking into account the leagues in which they were won.
Sir Alex Ferguson
- 2x Champions League winner
- 13x English champion
- 1x FIFA Club World Cup
- 1x World Cup winner
- 2x European Cup of Country Champions
- 2x UEFA Supercup
- 5x English Cup winner
- 4x English League Cup
- 10x English Super Cup winner
- 3x Scottish champions
- 4x Scottish Cup winners
- 1x Scottish League Cup winner
Sir Alex Ferguson won a whopping 48 titles with Manchester United and FC Aberdeen. In addition, there are the two awards as world club coach in 1998 and 2007. The Scot not only won the Champions League twice and the Club World Cup once with Manchester United, but also won the English championship 13 times with Manchester United in his tenure of just over 26 years Red Devils won. In the 92/93 season he ended a 26-year drought with the legendary Class of 92 and brought the Premier League title back to Manchester for the first time since 66/67, the last of the legendary Busby era.
In 1986, Ferguson took over a club that had slipped into mediocrity and turned it into the English record champions during his tenure. He is responsible for 13 of the Red Devils’ 20 English championships and has shaped the club and its transfer and youth policy like no other coach has ever shaped a club. After Sir Alex Ferguson left Manchester United, many high-profile coaches took the reins at Old Trafford, but no one was able to come close to matching the successes of the Ferguson era and so they have been waiting at Old Trafford for a whopping 13 years winning the Premier League. The last title was won under the Scot last year.
What speaks in Ferguson’s favor is that he remained virtually untouchable at the top of a top club over a long period of time and led Manchester United to a record English championship.
What speaks against Ferguson is that he celebrated a large part of his success with just one club. With FC Aberdeen, Ferguson also won the Scottish championship three times, the Scottish Cup four times, the Scottish League Cup once, as well as the European Cup Winners’ Cup and the UEFA Super Cup.
Pep Guardiola
- 3x Champions League winner
- 5x English champion
- 3x FIFA Club World Cup
- 3x German champion
- 3x Spanish champion
- 4x UEFA Supercup
- 2x English Cup winner
- 2x German Cup winner
- 2x Spanish Cup winner
- 4x English League Cup winner
- 3x Spanish Super Cup winner
- 2x English Super Cup winner
36 titles, three clubs, also two world club coaches. First, Pep Guardiola revolutionized football with FC Barcelona and the Tiki Taka implemented there around Lionel Messi, before he won a total of eight championships with FC Bayern and Manchester City. Wherever Pep Guardiola hires, success comes.
Guardiola is currently achieving the masterpiece of his coaching career with Manchester City. Since his arrival in 2016, the Spaniard has dominated the strongest league in the world with the Citizens and has won the championship title five times in his seven years in office. Only Chelsea FC and Liverpool FC managed to knock the Skyblues off their throne, at least in the short term. Guardiola has made Manchester City the undisputed benchmark in professional football. In 2023 he also achieved the triple of Champions League, championship and cup.
What speaks in Guardiola’s favor is that his teams have taken the lead in three of the strongest leagues in the world and he has reinvented himself as a coach at all of his professional positions. From Tiki Taka at FC Barcelona to a well-thought-out ball-oriented wing game at FC Bayern to fast attacking football at Manchester City.
What speaks against Guardiola is that he always signed for clubs that were among the best in the league and had a large transfer budget. The Spaniard has invested two billion euros in new signings during his term in office, more than any other coach in the world.
Jose Mourinho
- 2x Champions League winner
- 3x English champion
- 2x Italian champion
- 1x Spanish champion
- 2x Portuguese champion
- 1x Europa League winner
- 1x UEFA Cup winner
- 1x Conference League
- 1x English Cup Winner
- 1x Spanish Cup winner
- 1x Italian Cup Winner
- 1x Portuguese Cup Winner
- 3x English Super Cup winner
- 1x Spansicher Superpokalsieger
- 1x Italian Super Cup winner
- 4x English Super Cup winner
- 1x Portuguese Super Cup winner
27 titles and four times world club coach. No other coach is as polarizing as José Mourinho. But his record proves him right: Once considered the greatest coaching talent of all time when he won the Champions League with FC Porto, the Portuguese’s path led back to Chelsea via Chelsea FC, Inter Milan and Real Madrid. From there it went on to Manchester United, Spurs and ultimately AS Roma.
No other coach was able to win the title of world club coach four times and hardly anyone else was able to invest as much as the Portuguese. Mourinho spent more than 1.80 billion euros on new signings and was the only coach to win the Champions League, the UEFA Cup, the Conference League and the Europa League. The Portuguese also won eight championships with four different teams in four different countries, including six in three of the five strongest leagues in the world. Three with Chelsea, two with Inter Milan and one with Real Madrid.
Apart from winning the Conference League with AS Roma in 21/22, the Portuguese’s last notable title was a few years ago: in 16/17 he won both the Europa League and the English League Cup with Manchester United.
What speaks for Mourinho is that he led two losing teams, namely FC Porto and Inter Milan, to Champions League victories.
What speaks against Mourinho is that he has hardly had any successes since the 16/17 season and his career has been characterized by failures. Just think of his time at Tottenham Hotspur FC.
Carlo Ancelotti
- 4x Champions League winner
- 1x English champion
- 3x FIFA Club World Cup
- 1x German champion
- 1x French champion
- 1x Italian champion
- 1x Spanish champion
- 4x UEFA Supercup
- 1x English Cup Winner
- 2x Spanish Cup winner
- 1x Italian Cup Winner
- 2x German Super Cup winner
- 1x Spansicher Superpokalsieger
- 1x Italian Super Cup winner
- 1x English Super Cup winner
25 titles and two times world club coach. AC Milan, FC Chelsea, Paris St. Germain, FC Bayern Munich, and Real Madrid – five top clubs from five countries. Carlo Ancelotti led them all to national and international success.
The Italian has won the Champions League four times to date. A feat that no other coach managed. With championship titles in Spain, Italy, France and Germany, Carlo Ancelotti has also been crowned champion in four of the five best leagues in the world and hardly any other coach has such a good relationship with his stars as the Italian. Ancelotti has long been seen as a coach who worked with experienced players. Since his (second) stint at Real Madrid, Ancelotti has shown that he can also develop young players and shape them into stars.
What speaks for Ancelotti is that he became champion in numerous top European leagues and he won the Champions League more often than any other coach.
The argument against Ancelotti is that, compared to Guardiola and Ferguson, he also had to accept numerous failures in his career and, at just over two years, has a comparatively short average length of office. Similar to Guardiola, Ancelotti achieved his successes exclusively with top clubs; with smaller clubs such as Everton FC, the track record was rather poor.
Conclusion
It is probably only a matter of time before Pep Guardiola becomes the most successful coach in the world. At 52, the Spaniard probably still has a few more years and therefore a few titles ahead of him.
But for now it’s time to put things on the back burner. Because not only because of his almost endless list of titles, the long term in office and the fact that he turned a club that had slipped into mediocrity into the English record champions, but above all because no one has shaped his club as much as he has, sir Alex Ferguson is clearly the most successful coach in history.
Mourinho, Ancelotti and Guardiola have one thing in common: after their departure, the clubs they coached continued to win titles. Paris St. Germain, FC Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Chelsea FC, they were all successful again after the departure of their star coaches at the time. At Old Trafford, however, they have been waiting for a championship title for 10 years. And if Ferguson hadn’t existed, it would have been almost 50 years.
Patrick Stummer, offen.at
2023-12-17 07:52:50
#successful #football #coach #time #apart.at
