Spoiler

Sixy Time – Six great managers heading to the World Cup

No, not you Diego

Klinsmann, van Basten, Dunga, Maradona – international football management, like policing and judging dance contests, seems to have become a young person’s game of late, with recently-retired legends heading straight to the dugout, and more often than not, tarnishing their reputations.

Not next summer however. In an unusually high-calibre field, (probably due to the young managers trend seeping down to club level – Ferrara, Leonardo, Guardiola etc) there may be as many as six managers at South Africa 2010, who have won the greatest prize in club football, the European Cup.

Can you name them? We help you after the jump…

Ottmar Hitzfeld – Switzerland
Finest Hour: 1997 Champions League with Borussia Dortmund and the 2001 Champions League with Bayern Munich

Switzerland clinched their place in South Africa last night, with a goalless draw at home to Israel . As one of only two managers to have won the European Cup with two different clubs, some may find it puzzling to see Hitzfeld scratching around with a fairly mediocre national team. Yet the man known as ‘der General’ grew up on the German-Swiss border, and spent much of his playing career in Switzerland, as well as beginning his management career there.

Vicente del Bosque – Spain
Finest Hour: 2000 & 2002 Champions Leagues with Real Madrid

Vicente del Bosque González is the man currently charged with the arduous task of steering the greatest team in the world across virgin territory to lift Spain’s first World Cup. Treated dreadfully by celebrity-obsessed Florentino Perez, lifting Jules Rimet in July will etch the, “shy, mustachioed man from Salamanca,” into any list of all-time managerial greats.

Marcello Lippi – Italy
Finest Hour: 1996 Champions League

Admirers of Sir Alex Ferguson regularly point out, how so many of his great mid-90s side were sufficiently inspired so as to go into management themselves. Well a staggering eight of Juventus’ outfield players from the 1996 European Cup winning side, have had a go at aping Lippi, most successfully in the cases of Antonio Conte (Atlanta) and Didier Deschamps (Marseilles). Just don’t mention Luca Vialli.

Fabio Capello – England
Finest Hour: 1994 Champions League

Presided over the finest club performance of all time, when his AC Milan side demolished Cryuff’s Barca 4-0 in the ’94 European Cup Final. Such is the unctuous adulation the British media currently revere Capello with, and such is the saturation of the coverage, that there probably isn’t too much else for us to say.

Giovanni Trapattoni – Republic of Ireland
Finest Hour: 1995 European Cup

Forever remembered for Heysel, the 1985 European Cup was also the culmination of five league titles the Trap won with Juve. Whilst the fixed seeding system may ultimately conspire against the Republic, the Irish will certainly be the draw the four seeded countries will wish to avoid in Zurich on Monday.

Guus Hiddink – Russia
Finest Hour: 1988 European Cup

Having led PSV to a penalty-shoot-out triumph against Benfica in 1988, Hiddink’s managerial career has leapt from one high to the next. Last spotted at Chelsea wearing a big watch, Hiddinks’ Russia should cruise through the qualifying play-offs to reach South Africa.

• Capello
• Chelsea
• England
• Hiddink
• Ireland
• Trapattoni
• World Cup