The Best Coaches in the International Game

By: Martha | January 11th, 2008

Lookin good, Slaven. The Germany-based International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) have a serious hard-on for numbers. The organization obsessively chronicles the history of football based on different statistics, but they’re best know for their months ranking of all the clubs in the world, based on, you guessed it, a point system that’s actually far more understandable that the one FIFA uses to rank national teams. (Sevilla is top of IFFHS’s list right now, by the way.)

IFFHS periodically also turn their obsessive attention other aspect of the game, and today they released their list of the best national team coaches, based on performance in their current/most recent gigs, and the relative youngsters seem to be taking over. Brazil’s Dunga — he’s just 44 — is the runaway winner, and just behind him is rockstar Slaven Bilić who, at 39 and in his first senior coaching job, led Croatia to Euro 2008.

Behind Dunga and Bilić is Iraq’s Jorvan Vieira. The Brazilian has been coaching for three decades and has spent much of his career in the Middle East, but leading Iraq to their miracle Asian Cup win after having been in charge of the team for only two months is clearly his crowning achievement, and the IFFHS’s voters thought he had a better years than such big names as Raymond Domenech, Roberto Donadoni (who, appropriately, are eight and nine in the ranking), and Big Phil Scolari (he’s joint 10th).

Greece’s Otto Rehhagel, who has got to be the only coach in recent years to follow a European Championship win with a failure to qualify for the World Cup and keep his job, ends up a more than respectable seventh, thanks to his team’s absolute domination of their Euro 2008 qualifying group. And, possibly, his general awesomeness. (At 69, Rehhagel is also there to represent for the old folks — it’s not just the kids who can win, you know.)

Additionally — prepare yourselves for a shock — there’s a chick on the list! (My god, don’t they check these things over before releasing them?!) Silvia Neid, the coach of Germany’s World Cup-winning women’s team, is in 12th, just behind Big Phil and several places ahead of Spain’s Luis Aragonés, which is somehow just perfect.