In the age of the trainer-clad, hoodie-wearing, on-trend super coach, it is a delight to announce the return of Jupp Heynckes, the greatest of the current clutch of managers with a significant Champions League record.
That’s right: the 72 year old prised out of retirement to solve a political crisis at Bayern Munich still tops Pep Guardiola, just as he did working as his predecessor at Bayern Munich, where his treble of domestic cup, Bundesliga and Champions league could never be matched by Guardiola.
The table below is an attempt to rank the most significant managers of this generation by their Champions League records.
Our ranking of managers by their Champions League performances
Jupp Heynckes, in his fourth spell as Bayern Munich manager, is a Champions League master
Heynckes (left) won the first of his two Champions League titles with Real Madrid in 1998
And Heynckes followed that up in 2013 when Bayern Munich beat Borussia Dortmund 2-1
And if you work out the win ratio for the Champions League from managers who have a significant body of work, no-one can match Heynckes with his 33 per cent hit rate, or two wins from six Champions League campaigns in his career. Not even Guardiola.
Some clarification, before Twitter goes into meltdown. The table is necessarily arbitrary and my rules are that you have to have completed at least four seasons of Champions League football as a manager to qualify.
This is not deliberately to exclude the achievements of Zinedine Zidane, who has a one hundred per cent hit rate of winning the trophy over two season, or Luis Enrique, at 33 per cent over three seasons.
But clearly percentage ratios are harder to maintain the longer you go on and that is essentially what the table is attempting to judge. Basically, who are your Champions League bankers?
Zinedine Zidane has won back-to-back European Cups with Real Madrid
Pep Guardiola ranks second in our table of managers – he won with Barcelona back in 2011
And it’s no surprise the list of names included are essentially the short list when Paris Saint Germain or any self-respecting super club goes looking for a new manager.
Equally, the elevation of Heynckes is not to belittle Guardiola, nor his achievements. Guardiola is a Champions league phenomenon. Last season was exceptional in that it was a genuine failure.
When we complied a similar table last year, his Champions League hit rate for semi-finals was 100 per cent: seven campaigns contested, and seven semi-finals reached; two finals and two victories.
Of course, you can argue all you like about the gilded nature of Guardiola’s life and the extraordinary teams he has been presented with to manage but his accomplishments are still huge.
Other than the Zidane outlier, Guardiola’s semi-final hit rate of 87 per cent is unsurpassed in the modern era. On that he is top of this table.
And, I would argue, the semi final ratio is the mark of an excellent coach, perhaps more so that the win ratio.
Carlo Ancelotti celebrates with the trophy after Milan beat Liverpool in the 2007 final
Jose Mourinho, twice winner of the famous competition, ranks fourth on the managers’ list
If we accept the oft-cited maxim – and interestingly it is cited by both old-school managers and new school-statisticians – that finals are unpredictable affairs often settled by chance, your stats can be skewed by a lucky break, a bad decision or a penalty shoot-out.
Reaching semi finals is what an excellent coach should be aspiring to do, the par for the course for a coach in charge of an economically-powerful club.
From thereon in, you might win, you might not. No club and not even Florentino Perez should expect to win the Champions League every year.
However, the coterie of Europe’s richest clubs ought to start the campaign expecting to make the semis.
On that reasoning, Guardiola is the best guarantee of Champions League success but Heynckes isn’t bad, Diego Simeone is the coming man and Jose Mourinho is not far behind.
Atletico Madrid boss Diego Simeone has twice led his side to the Champions League final
The table doesn’t make great reading for Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger, who hasn’t won the trophy
Perhaps it is possible to extrapolate some broad points from the table:
- Super coaches can be irascible grandfathers, not just bright young things. There is plenty wrong about Heynckes.
Those close to him say that he could lose his nerve under pressure and lash out at players. His coaching career might have lapsed into that of decent itinerant manager rather than super coach.
Spells at Eintracht Frankfurt, Benfica, and a second stint at Borussia Monchengladbach, where he was a legendary striker, were failures, the latter ending in death threats.
The early years of his first period at Bayern was a success with two Bundesliga titles but he then faltered; his third spell at the club from 2011-13 (he was caretaker in 2009) ended with that glorious treble.
At Real Madrid he was sacked after winning the 1998 Champions League. So both his victories in this tournament have seen him out of work the following season.
An animated Jupp Heynckes on the sidelines during Bayern’s 2-1 win at Celtic on Tuesday
The point is that manager reputations can ebb and flow and we should be much-less swayed by the fashion of the moment.
Glancing at the table, the fact that Louis van Gaal was probably the wrong fit form Manchester United doesn’t mean he’s out-of touch and shouldn’t work again at the age of 66.
At a lower level, Ronald Koeman’s sacking at Everton equally shouldn’t and won’t be the end of him. Heynckes is the counterpoint to the idea that new is always better.
- Jamie Carragher’s point on Monday about Newcastle United being a Championship/Premier League side with a Champions League manager was well made. Rafa Benitez’s record is excellent.
For clarity, the stats compiled work only on seasons in which a Champions League campaign was completed by the manager in question.
So Benitez’s seasons at Inter, Real Madrid and Chelsea are ruled out. (You can hardly blame a manager for not progressing if he isn’t given the chance to do so).
That’s how he tops Sir Alex Ferguson (just) on a semi-final hit rate. Obviously his last full campaign was three years ago and ended in just missing out at the group stages.
But, still, for Newcastle to be managed by someone who would probably be ranked among the top ten coaches in Europe is a fairly wacky turn of events.
Rafa Benitez has an excellent record in the Champions League and won in 2005
Benitez comes in above Sir Alex Ferguson overall, despite the Scot winning the trophy twice
- A word on Simeone and Max Allegri. The former has been lauded plenty of times before. And perhaps this a good time to lionise him again.
After all, the pretty remarkable record with Atletico in the past four years looks as though it is about to be besmirched with an early exit from the Champions League.
Atleti are only really cast a David to Goliath when viewed through the prism of Real Madrid. They are still a powerful club.
But his record at Spain’s third club has been exceptional. And Allegri, seemingly at the opposite end of the emotional scale, has built a body of work in this competition which is hard to ignore and which is why he seems the most obvious fit for Arsenal when the time does come.
Massimiliano Allegri has started to build a good track record in the Champions League
- Lastly, is tempting to consider who will be added to this list in five years’ time.
Zidane and Enrique obviously and, by then, we’ll have a more rounded idea of what kind of coach they are.
Everyone’s favourite coach at present is Napoli’s Maurizio Sarri but he’s 58 and hardly an emerging name, though his fresh tactical approach and management of resources at Napoli is undoubtedly wonderful to watch.
What is striking is and perhaps apposite after Tuesday’s night’s awful performance in Rome, is that Antonio Conte has had only had two campaigns at Juventus and he was eliminated at the group stages one year and reached the quarter finals the next year. For all his credentials, he still has to establish himself at this level.
Mauricio Pochettino, Leonardo Jardim and Julian Nagelsmann are probably the ones we will watching over time. The world will wait to see if Bayern do appoint Nagelsmann next season, which would give him a platform to build a formidable record.
Antonio Conte is furious on the sidelines as Chelsea slump to a bad defeat away to Roma
Julian Nagelsmann could be a future star in our Champions League manager countdown
Jardim will presumably move from Monaco to Paris Saint Germain or an Italian club at some point to embark on better-resourced campaigns.
And Pochettino, whether with Spurs or Real Madrid, is surely a man made for the Champions League and this table, notwithstanding his desperately–disappointing debut last year.