Surprisingly few European Championship teams have an internationally known top coach. Correspondingly, more countries go to the tournament under the leadership of the “union man”. What does this all mean?
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National team football differs from club football because of the conditions.
National team coaches are often a different group than club coaches.
The quality of national team football is lower, so more traditional players can shine.
Tactics guru Michael Cox made a special observation in 2015. A large part of the players who were successful in the prestigious competitions were mediocre at the club team level.
Cox cited Germany as an example of the phenomenon Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klosen. The former had spent some time miserably first at Arsenal and then at his loan club Inter. The latter, on the other hand, scored only eight goals for Lazio in all games in the previous season.
However, this did not prevent Klose from becoming the number one player in the history of the World Cup in the summer of 2014. At the end of the tournament, both Klose and Podolski were world champions. At the end of their careers, the duo had a total of 267 international matches and 120 international goals under their belts.
In the end, Cox also pulled a two-meter one into the same bundle Peter Crouchinwho scored 22 goals in 42 international matches.
“These players have one thing in common: They are basic forwards, and therefore feel better suited to national team football than club football. Klose is a pure finisher, Podolski is a head-down and cannon type predator and Crouch is a tall target attacker,” Cox listed to ESPN.
In fact, Crouch had scored as many international goals in his career as those considered “better”. Andy Cole, Robbie Fowler, The Ferdinands and Ian Wright in total. Cox appointed the four as Premier League special men, while Crouch was the national team specialist.
Cox’s attention felt special. You would suddenly think that a good player at the club level would also be a good player in the national team. However, this was not automatically the case.
And it wasn’t just about the attackers. In coaches, the differences were even clearer.
International match specialist Miroslav Klose in action against Finland.
soccer expert Marko Rajamäki says directly that club and national teams are almost different worlds.
“As a rule, national team coaches are a different group than club coaches. No Markku in Kanerva too had evidence of the club team when he was chosen as the head coach of Huuhkajie”, Rajamäki points out.
Kanerva was actually the prototype of a coach profile: he was a union man. Spain, for example, are in the same category at the summer European Championships Luis de la Fuente and England Gareth Southgate.
“Coaches who operate in a federation environment have been involved in training and developing the sport. They have maybe been in the youth national teams, maybe also in the A national team as assistant coaches”, Rajamäki lists.
England head coach Gareth Southgate (in white shirt) is the prototype of a union man: a restrained, diplomatic and polite coach with no great achievements as a coach at club level.
The men of the union are also often associated with restrained diplomacy, which is appreciated in national team circles. A club team coach can fiercely support his own side, but in the national team, the coach has to keep his relations with the clubs and federations in order.
You can see the difference if you compare England’s Southgate, even if he just left Liverpool to Jürgen Klopp or from the “us against others” spirit to getting its driving force Jose Mourinhoon.
According to Rajamäki, the biggest difference between club and national team coaches is not in substantive knowledge such as tactics, but in what management is like and how much time is available for it.
“It’s completely different. Player development takes place in clubs. The club has certain players who have contracts. The coach is in a superior position to the players, if the terms of the working world are used. He works with the players every day. It is much closer to activities, development and teaching.”
“The national teams are a camp activity. We spend much less time with the players, but we still have to get them to commit,” Rajamäki compares.
It is often said that the national team differs from the club team in that you cannot acquire new players for the national team. Rajamäki also sees another side to the situation: it is easier to change one player to another in the national team.
When coming to the prestigious competition, coaching changes because the nature of national team activities changes. The camp, which used to last from a few days to a maximum of two weeks, stretches to more than a month.
“The tournament is a tough one. It’s not easy. The camp starts a couple of weeks before the tournament. The pressures are terrible, and yet you should be able to create a relaxed and good atmosphere in the team. Not an indifferent or loose feeling, but such a positive professional mood. It’s really important, because the most important games are only played at the end of the start.”
National team football is different from club football because the conditions are different. In his assessment, Michael Cox even went so far as to directly say that national team football is inferior in quality to club team games.
This again is due to the disparity between the clubs and the Bosman rule, due to which the best players go to the best clubs.
“Because the level is lower, more traditional and less skilled players can shine, just as they do against underdogs in club teams,” Cox summed up.
Karim Benzema (centre) is an example of a player who was better in the club team than in the national team. Benzema shone in Real Madrid and even won the Golden Ball for the best player in the world, but he did not fit the style of play of the French national team.
The playing methods of the national teams are generally considered quite simple. Since the coaches don’t have much time with the players, a strong defense is often built first on the training fields. There is time to use fewer pucks for the attack, which is why the models and radar pairs created in the club teams can be important.
In addition, some coaches have even ruined the game of their national team by trying to build overly complex attacking models in a short time.
Football is a collective sport, hence the best players Cristiano Ronaldosta to Lionel Messi are often at their best in club teams. Apart from the trio mentioned by Cox, there are few real national team specialists.
Coaches on the side the division is clearer. Even in the late 1980s, the idea was entertained that the head coach could be an all-round genius who would excel both in the club and the national team. The best example of this was Valery Lobanovskiwho successfully coached Kyiv Dynamo and the Soviet national team at the same time.
In the final match of the 1988 European Championship, Lobanovsky’s Soviet Union lost Rinus Michels to Holland. Michels had previously won the European Cup with Ajax.
This was supposed to be a sign that a great coach is ahead of others at both club and national team level. The same was invoked when the player legend who directly became national team coach Franz Beckenbauer first won the world championship in 1990 and then the national championships in both Marseille and Bayern Munich.
However, successful national team coaching was already separating from club coaching. 1992–2000 European Championship gold winners Richard Möller Nielsen, Berti Vogts and Roger Lemerre were all more or less union men.
Richard Möller Nielsen, who also captained the Finnish national team, was better suited to the helm of the national team than of the club team.
In a way, club and national team football have been different worlds since the beginning. 44 coaches have led their teams to victory in the Champions League or its predecessor, the European Cup. 25 of them have worked as the head coach of the national team. Out of this group, only four coaches have reached the prize competition victory: Marcello Lippi (MM gold 2006), Vicente del Bosque (World Championship gold 2010 and European Championship gold 2012), Rinus Michels (EC gold 1988) and Jose Villalonga (EM-kulta 1964).
Follow-up and the differentiation of national team coaching has only strengthened in recent years. In the last 15 years, only two of the coaches who have won the Champions League (Hansi Flinck and Luis Enrique) have worked as the head coaches of the national team.
The most successful and talked about coaches of the 2010s and 2020s have practically all been club coaches, from Jose Mourinho to Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp Carlo Ancelottiin.
“Guardiola and Klopp are so intense that they have to be close all the time. Their model probably wouldn’t work in the national team,” says Rajamäki.
“Guardiola wouldn’t be able to take his style of play to the current level in the national team even if he was coaching Spain. He needs all the work hours he has in the club team. Not all the money and big acquisitions, but all the time he can use to hone his playing to its peak.”
However, Rajamäki does not deny that a top coach would be useful in a prestigious tournament. However, he believes that the greater benefit will come from previous experience in value competitions, for example, instead of trophies won in the club team.
“Tournament experience is useful. When a coach has lived and experienced value competitions before, he already knows a little better what works. I think that even in Finland we would be more ready for the next tournament now that we have already been to the games.”
He has no doubt about who gives the biggest advantage.
”Didier Deschamps has seen and won everything in prestigious competitions as a player, captain and coach. You can’t buy that kind of know-how.”