Photo by PICRYL, CC by 1.0
Success in international football is notoriously elusive, with even the sport’s most talented teams often failing on the big stage. Countless star-studded teams have been unable to live up to expectations, and sometimes even bowed out of competitions in utter humiliation.
International football is a different beast from the club game, and it takes a unique managerial touch to succeed at this level.
Here’s a look at the elite few who have carried the weight of a nation’s hopes and dreams, becoming immortal in football folklore.
Vittorio Pozzo
The best place to start is with the only person to have led a men’s team to two World Cup triumphs.
Vittorio Pozzo won the World Cup with Italy in 1934 and 1938 and also led his country to the gold medal at the Berlin Olympics in 1936.
Il Vecchio Maestro (The Old Master) led the Azzurri to a 30-match unbeaten run between 1935 and 1939 that was only beaten by Roberto Mancini’s European champions in 2021.
He left the post after the 1948 Olympics, having been in charge for 19 years, the longest stay of any European national team manager.
Mario Zagallo
Brazilian Mario Zagallo had already won two World Cups as a player in 1958 and 1962 before he took charge of arguably the greatest international team of all time, the one that beat Italy 4-1 in the 1970 final in Mexico.
But that was only the start of his long association with the national team as his team finished fourth in 1974 and he was also assistant to Carlos Alberto Parreira’s team that triumphed against Italy again in 1994.
Zagallo was the manager when Brazil lost to hosts France in the 1998 World Cup final, a year after he had led his nation to a Copa America triumph in 1997, so there is almost nothing that he hasn’t achieved.
Helmut Schon
Helmut Schon led West Germany to four World Cup finals and no manager has been in charge of more games at the finals (25) and won more of them (16).
After being assistant manager between 1959 and 1964, he lost his first World Cup final when they were defeated 4-2 by England in 1966 and, after leading his country to third spot four years later, he finally got his hands on the trophy when West Germany beat the Netherlands in 1974.
That victory came two years after success in the European Championships and two years before they were beaten by Czechoslovakia and Antonin Panenka’s cheeky penalty in a shootout in the Euros final.
Rinus Michels
Schon’s opposite number in the 1974 final was Rinus Michels, who may not have had the trophy success of some of the others on this list but deserves inclusion because his teams played such wonderful football.
The father of Total Football had led Ajax to three successive European Cup triumphs with talismanic superstar Johan Cruyff and the pair were integral to arguably the greatest team never to have won the World Cup.
He did return to the Dutch hotseat 14 years later when his team that included Marco van Basten and Ruud Gullit, beat the Soviet Union in the final of the European Championships.
Vicente del Bosque
Vicente del Bosque won the Champions League twice with Real Madrid, but he will always be hailed as a hero in Spain after directing them to their first World Cup triumph in South Africa in 2010.
He inherited a team who had won the European Championships the year before but helped his side to develop into by far the best international team on the planet.
They retained their European crown in 2012 when they brushed Italy aside 4-0 in the final in Kyiv and while he was unable to repeat the magic in Brazil two years later, his place in history had already been assured.
Lionel Scaloni
Lionel Scaloni was a literal nobody when the AFA appointed him the manager of Argentina following La Albiceleste’s catastrophic World Cup campaign. The appointment raised a lot of eyebrows since Scaloni never managed at senior level.
Their third-place finish in the 2019 Copa America did little to quell skepticism. But the AFA kept his faith in him, and it proved to be one of the smartest – if not the smartest – decisions ever taken by the football regulatory body of a nation.
Scaloni led Argentina to the 2021 Copa America and ended their 28-year-wait for major silverware. But, the best was yet to come. Despite suffering a surprise loss to Saudi Arabia in their opening match, Scaloni’s Argentina went on to win the 2022 World Cup.
Scaloni’s winning run continued in the 2024 Copa America, and now he will look to become the first manager since Pozzo to lift the World Cup trophy twice.
