For countless years, the international game has functioned as something between a way station and a retirement community for members of the coaching profession. The club game offered the chance to forge your own philosophy on the training field, to assemble the greatest talent you could find across the globe, to earn the biggest bucks.
Alternatively you could take the helm of your nation and what a thrill ride that could be. Scrabble around to find out which of your star names might make themselves available 18 months out from the next major tournament! Discover that a collective belief in your tactical ineptitude is the one thing that unites football fanbases up and down the land! Get dragged into an unintelligible bullying/biting/poppy scandal! You can see why even coaches whose track records were as patchy as Gareth Southgate’s was in 2016 need selling.
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At the last two European Championships there has been one team that has had the look of a contender not because of their squad or their form but the talent in their dugout. In 2021, Italy’s win was a triumph of Roberto Mancini’s. Julian Nagelsmann may only have needed a few more favorable refereeing decisions in Stuttgart to do the same.
These big beasts are not lone hunters anymore. In Thomas Tuchel, England will be managed by a man who has won club football’s biggest prize as they pursue the international game’s. Five years ago Mauricio Pochettino was in that same battle for Champions League glory. Now he is hoping to be the man who history remembers for deepening soccer’s roots in the USA. The great coaching wunderkind Nagelsmann, enjoyed his temporary sojourn at Euro 2024 so much that he has reupped with Germany for the 2026 World Cup. And if he does get lured away, it has been suggested that Jurgen Klopp’s deal with Red Bull includes a get out clause so he can take on Die Mannschaft.
Imagine where this trend could go. Pep Guardiola was enraptured by the Brazil side of 1982, it’s not unimaginable that the stars might align for him to lead them out 44 years later. Set them against the stars the international game has created for itself — Luis de la Fuente, Lionel Scaloni — and you have almost as much talent in the dugouts as the pitches across America in the summer of 2026.
Will it last? Don’t count on it. As is so often the case in international football, its trends are merely a reflection of the state of the club game. Why are Tuchel and Pochettino being drawn towards 2026? They would tell you it’s “to put a second star on the shirt” and “to realize a dream.” There would doubtless be truth in that, as there would in the reality that the club jobs coaches of this ilk would want are growing fewer and fewer.
There had never been a great many in the first place. Post-COVID the openings are further dwindling. Serie A might still be an absorbing league but it offers neither the finances nor the player pool to tempt the best of the best, particularly now Juventus find themselves in a period of retrenchment. Similarly PSG may not entice quite as many big names post-Luis Enrique if they don’t restore a few stars to their roster.
Anyway Pochettino and Tuchel have both cycled through the Parc des Princes and Chelsea and the latter has taken his swing at Bayern Munich too. The events of the summer showed that plenty of top coaches are rather skeptical that the stars and executives FC Hollywood would be any easier to work with than those in Tinsel Town. Barcelona are so cash-strapped that they are (so far successfully) gambling they can restore some luster to Hansi Flick, while Real Madrid seem bafflingly set in the dugout, Carlo Ancelotti doubtless easing along to the business end of the European Cup, where his side will conclude it is time to click. When he is done, well it’s probably Xabi Alonso’s job if he wants it.
That leaves the Premier League and if you’re a true blue elite coach, only a few of those clubs anyway. The Arsenal job is locked down for the foreseeable, Manchester City’s will be decided by the whims of Pep Guardiola and taking the Liverpool vacancy would have been the act of a brave man post Jurgen Klopp. Away from the top three, you have a Tottenham who are no longer enthralled by the prospect of getting the biggest names and Manchester United. And, well, as they say, this is Manchester United we’re talking about. Caveat emptor.
With the market as it is now, why wouldn’t you give yourself 18 months of well-paid part time work, not least when nothing can boost your stock quite like firing a host to the business end of a World Cup or, whisper it, ending 60 years of hurt. Better that than whatever basket cases the early weeks of the 2024-25 season throws up (looking at you, West Ham and Manchester United).
Will this movement of coaching talent to the international game last? It’ll require the continental plates of the European game to shift in a particular way. If enough top European clubs and leagues get out of their own way then the next Tuchel and Pochettino will be overwhelmed by options. Alternatively, if the Premier League’s gravitational pull grows, it may simply be able to pull the 20 or so best coaches permanently into its orbit, creating a carousel much like the NBA or NFL.
The club landscape will doubtless change in the years to come. What won’t is the allure of lifting the World Cup even if not for the country of your birth. While that remains just about the biggest prize in soccer, there is no reason to suppose that some of the very best coaches won’t periodically be tempted away from the bright lights of the club game.
