Managed but never played for your country

[Reed John]

Managed but never played for your country

Sam wrote: That's good digging, Reed.

Is Gordon Bradley related to the current Bradleys, or is it just a popular surname in US men's football for some reason?

I don't think they're related.

[Sam]

Managed but never played for your country

That's good digging, Reed.

Is Gordon Bradley related to the current Bradleys, or is it just a popular surname in US men's football for some reason?

[jwdd27]

Managed but never played for your country

Patrick Thistle wrote:

That's correct, although Karl did play in Wales for Caernarfon and Oswestry, but was not really even of that standard as a player.

I was surprised that Luton manager Nathan Jones (born Rhondda) was never called up, had a fairly decent career in the mid-lower leagues, and it was back when Wales were shit.

Oswestry is in England. Barely. Although the club were founder members of the FAW which is why they could play in the Welsh system. (TNS bought them out and now play in Oswestry.)

I know the area a bit as I have a friend who is from between Llansantfraid and Oswestry on the English side. I always used to tell him he was from Total Network Solutions.

[anton pulisov]

Managed but never played for your country

Lars Lagerbäck, Tommy Söderberg and Erik Hamrén for Sweden, off the top of my head.

[Reed John]

Managed but never played for your country

ursus arctos wrote: Reflecting the fact that "management" has been a recognised occupation in North American sports since the mid-19th c (as well as a tendency to appoint foreigners), the number of US national team coaches who never got a US cap massively outnumbers those who do.

But a lot of them were never eligible to play for the US.

Looking up the history of US managers led to this tid-bit, which shows how far the game has come in the US in my lifetime.

In 1973, [Arena] earned his only national team cap as a second-half substitute for Bob Rigby in a 2-0 loss to Israel. National team coach, Gordon Bradley, had called Arena into the national team for an earlier game against Haiti, but Arena could not get time off from his job teaching at a local junior high school. In addition to his single cap with the U.S. soccer team, Arena also played for the national lacrosse team which won the 1974 World Lacrosse Championship and finished runner up in 1978.

[Patrick Thistle]

Managed but never played for your country

jwdd27 wrote: That's correct, although Karl did play in Wales for Caernarfon and Oswestry, but was not really even of that standard as a player.

I was surprised that Luton manager Nathan Jones (born Rhondda) was never called up, had a fairly decent career in the mid-lower leagues, and it was back when Wales were shit.

Oswestry is in England. Barely. Although the club were founder members of the FAW which is why they could play in the Welsh system. (TNS bought them out and now play in Oswestry.)

[Satchmo Distel]

Managed but never played for your country

Willie Ormond is the only Scotland coach at a World Cup finals who had international caps. Jock Stein included.

[stefan]

Managed but never played for your country

None of the last four managers for Sweden has played professional football, or even above a level where I played. That's Tommy Söderberg, Lars Lagerbäck, Erik Hamren and the newly appointed Janne Andersson.

Incidentally, Hamren's Swedish Wikipedia entry has him down as the new manager of FCUM, which would be funny if true, not so funny as a joke.

[Satchmo Distel]

Managed but never played for your country

Ally McLeod?

[jwdd27]

Managed but never played for your country

That's correct, although Karl did play in Wales for Caernarfon and Oswestry, but was not really even of that standard as a player.

I was surprised that Luton manager Nathan Jones (born Rhondda) was never called up, had a fairly decent career in the mid-lower leagues, and it was back when Wales were shit.

[ursus arctos]

Managed but never played for your country

Reflecting the fact that "management" has been a recognised occupation in North American sports since the mid-19th c (as well as a tendency to appoint foreigners), the number of US national team coaches who never got a US cap massively outnumbers those who do.

[Sam]

Managed but never played for your country

Argentina have only had one non-Argentine manager, Filippo Pascucci, an Italian who managed them for one game in 1934. Him aside, their non-capped managers are:

The very first two managers, Ángel Vázquez and José Millán, are hard to pin down as they don't have Wikipedia pages, but they don't appear to have been capped.

Juan José Tramutola, who doesn't appear to have played for them but was the officially designated director técnico at the 1930 World Cup, and was aged 27 years and 246 days when they played their first match of it. Even more impressively, he'd won the Campeonato Sudamericano (nowadays called the Copa América) as manager the previous year!

Ángel Fernández Roca, who took charge for four games from 1938 to 1939, and doesn't appear to have ever played professionally at all.

José Barreiro, one of the managerial trio(!) Argentina took to the 1959 Copa América, which they won, hadn't played for Argentina.

José D'Amico is another who wasn't a player at all.

Horacio Torres, in charge for six games between 1963 and 1964.

Juan Carlos Lorenzo, the manager for the 1962 and 1966 World Cup campaigns.

Alejandro Galán - known in Brazil as Jim Lópes - was never a footballer but did manage the national team twice during an extensive coaching career stretching from 1937 to 1976.

Carlos Bilardo.

Alfio Basile.

José Pekerman.

Since Pekerman, Basile's had another go and since him it's been five managers (or 'managers') in a row who've been capped, of whom three - Diego Maradona, Sergio Batista and current interim boss Julio Olarticoechea - were 1986 World Cup winners as players.

[Reed John]

Managed but never played for your country

Bob Bradley never played professionally anywhere, as far as I can tell.
Bruce Arena did have one cap for the US, IIRC. Back in the early 70s when the USMNT barely existed.

[Kevin S]

Managed but never played for your country

Duncan Gardner wrote:

Martin O'Neill.
Giovanni Trapattoni.
Brian Kerr.
Jack Charlton.

I think the rule is that they have to have been eligible to have been capped by the country they managed, but weren't.

Mad Mart was eligible (along with a 700 million strong Worldwide diaspora admittedly )

Yes, until he played for NI.

[Duncan Gardner]

Managed but never played for your country

Kevchenko wrote:

Martin O'Neill.
Giovanni Trapattoni.
Brian Kerr.
Jack Charlton.

I think the rule is that they have to have been eligible to have been capped by the country they managed, but weren't.

Mad Mart was eligible (along with a 700 million strong Worldwide diaspora admittedly )

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Managed but never played for your country

I was wondering if there was some basis to any assertion that to be a manager of a team going to an international finals, it would help to have been to one as a player. But increasingly, as this list grows, it seems to make no difference at all.

[Borracho]

Managed but never played for your country

Cesare Prandelli
Marcello Lippi
Azeglio Vicini
Arrigo Sacchi

Enzo Bearzot got one cap.

Also:
Fernando Santos
Jose Villalonga

[blameless]

Managed but never played for your country

Between Willie Ormond's departure in 1977 and Alex McLeish's appointment in 2007 not one Scotland boss had actually played for Scotland (Berti Vogts had played for West Germany, but that doesn't count).

In the interim, Ally Macleod, Jock Stein, Alex Ferguson, Andy Roxburgh, Craig Brown and Walter Smith all managed the nation they won a combined total of 0 caps for.

[Gangster Octopus]

Managed but never played for your country

Jock Stein

[G-Man]

Managed but never played for your country

Erich Ribbeck never played for Germany.

If I remember correctly, Rudi Völler was given some title other than "trainer" when he coached Germany because he lacked the required qualifications. The official "Nationaltrainer" was Michael Skibbe, who never represented Germany either.

[jwdd27]

Managed but never played for your country

Only two of the 92 league managers are former England internationals (Nigel Clough and Keith Curle).

I think that in the modern age, players of any sort of standard make enough money from the game to not be bothered with management.
It's the shit players or early retirees who make it in coaching.
Gary Neville has done it the other way round, good player, shit coach.

[Gangster Octopus]

Managed but never played for your country

Alex Ferguson

[Kevin S]

Managed but never played for your country

Well, Kerr counts.

[Kevin S]

Managed but never played for your country

Carnivorous Vulgaris wrote: Martin O'Neill.
Giovanni Trapattoni.
Brian Kerr.
Jack Charlton.

I think the rule is that they have to have been eligible to have been capped by the country they managed, but weren't.

[Kevin S]

Managed but never played for your country

I think there are going to be a lot of these; France has five official managers who were never capped.

José Arribas and Jean Snella (neither)
Louis Dugauguez
Georges Boulogne
Gérard Houllier
Jacques Santini