The Greatest Football Managers of All Time
What a great manager actually does
Management in football is misunderstood from the outside. The public version involves tactical boards and press conferences. The private version involves convincing twenty-five people with large egos to sacrifice individual performance for collective success, every single day, for years.
The managers who do this best tend to share one quality: they can hold two contradictory ideas at the same time. They have a clear philosophical vision of how football should be played, and they are also completely pragmatic about adapting that vision to the players they have.
The case for Ferguson
Sir Alex Ferguson managed Manchester United for 26 years, won 13 league titles and two Champions Leagues, and rebuilt the squad completely at least three times during that period. No other manager in the history of the sport has maintained success at that level for that long.
What makes him unusual is not the trophies but the adaptability. The team that won the treble in 1999 played nothing like the team that won the Champions League in 2008, which played nothing like the team that won the league in 2013. He changed his style to match the era and the players he had.
The case for Guardiola
Pep Guardiola has won league titles in Spain, Germany and England, which no other manager has done. His teams at Barcelona from 2008 to 2012 changed how the game is played globally; the possession and pressing model they demonstrated is now copied at every level of the sport.
The argument against him is that he has always had access to the best players. The argument for him is that he makes those players better, and that the tactical problems he sets opponents are harder to solve than those any other manager creates.
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