Three of the greatest football coaches of our time

Josep Guardiola

Trained: Barcelona (2008 – 2012), Bayern Munich (2013 – present)

Achievements as a coach: two wins in the Champions League (Barcelona), three wins in the Spanish League (Barcelona), a win in the Spanish Cup (Barcelona).

Guardiola is a graduate of Barcelona, for the main team of the club he played from 1990 to 2001. In the summer of 2007, the Spaniard headed the Barca reserve team, which played in the fourth division.In the 2007-08 season, the team under his leadership won the tournament in their group and got the opportunity to compete for relegation to the Spanish third division.

Guardiola became the sixth specialist to win the Champions League both as a player and as a coach, joining Miguel Munoz, Giovanni Trapattoni, Johan Cruyff, Carlo Ancelotti and Frank Rijkard.

In 2013, PEP has signed a three-year contract with Bayern, replacing the post of the head coach local coach Jupp Chaincase. Despite the impressive success of Munich, Guardiola somewhat modified the style of the team compared to the schemes of his predecessor (transferred Philipp Lahm to the support zone, made a bet in the center of the field on the creative Alcantara and Goetze). However, the team’s results were not affected by tactical innovations, and it still remains number one in European football.
Now Bayern are in first place in the Bundesliga with a huge gap from their pursuers, and they have also confidently made it to the play-offs of the Champions League.

Fabio Capello

Trained: “Milan” (1987, 1991 – 1996, 1997 – 1998), “real” (1996 – 1997, 2006 – 2007), “Roma (1999 – 2004), Juventus (2004 – 2006), England (2008 – 2012), Russia (2012 – present).

Achievements as a coach: winning the Champions League (AC Milan), seven wins in the Italian League (AC Milan, Juventus), two wins in the Spanish League (real Madrid).

Capello started his coaching career in 1987 at AC Milan. However, he managed to lead the first team only four years later.

The very next day after leaving Juventus, Capello signed a contract with real Madrid.
From
2008 to 2012, Capello coached the English national team without much success, missing Euro 2008 and losing heavily at the 2010 world Cup in the 1/8 final of Germany (1:4), which did not prevent Fabio from remaining at the helm of the team.

On February 8, 2012, Capello left the post of England coach due to disagreement with the decision of the country’s football Association to strip John Terry of the captain’s armband. Soon the Italian led the Russian national team. Thanks to a good performance in the qualifying campaign for the 2014 world Cup, our team made it to the world Cup for the first time since 2002, which will be held next summer in Brazil.

Ottmar Hitzfeld

Trained: Zug (1983 – 1984), Aarau (1984 – 1988), Grasshoppers (1988 – 1991, all – Switzerland). Borussia Dortmund (1991 – 1997), Bayern Munich” (1998 – 2004, 2007 – 2008), Swiss national team (2008 – present).

Achievements as a coach: two wins in the Champions League (Borussia), seven wins in the German championship, two wins in the Swiss championship, eight wins in national Cups.

In 1983, Ottmar Hitzfeld set a goal — to achieve such success as a coach within five years, which would allow him not to wait for offers from managers, but to be able to choose his own job. And exactly five years later, he was invited to one of the strongest Swiss clubs of that time – grasshoppers. With this team, he won the country Cup twice and became Swiss champion twice.

In 2004, Hitzfeld was dismissed for “unsatisfactory results”, and later sensationally refused to lead the German national team, causing a flurry of criticism and discontent of fans in his address. However, Ottmar was not interested in offers from Dynamo Kiev, Lokomotiv and Borussia.

At the end of Euro 2008, Hitzfeld took over the relatively modest Swiss national team. Hitzfeld was able to adjust the team’s unbalanced game and took it to the world Cup from the first place in the group. And in the first match of the 2010 world Cup, one of the main favorites of the tournament, the Spanish national team, was defeated 1-0, for which that defeat was the only one in South Africa.

Under Hitzfeld’s leadership, Switzerland also reached the world Cup in Brazil, again taking first place in their qualifying group.