FIFA World Cup Most Winning Coaches List
When teams win the FIFA World Cup, the players often get the majority of the praise and credit for their success. While they deserve the praise, they wouldn’t have been able to accomplish this without the help of their coach. Coaches are responsible for training their players and ensuring they stick to the game plan during the match. Winning a World Cup is no small task for a coach, and it is certainly something to celebrate.
Of the 21 World Cup winners, there have been 20 different coaches to lead their team to the title. This further exemplifies the difficulty of winning a World Cup as a coach, as due to the four-year gap between tournaments, many coaches do not even get the chance to coach in two World Cups, let alone win two. The remainder of this piece will discuss some of the most notable World Cup winning coaches.
What Coaches Have Won The Men’s FIFA World Cup?
- Alberto Suppici: 1930 FIFA World Cup
- Vittorio Pozzo: 1934 FIFA World Cup
- Vittorio Pozzo: 1938 FIFA World Cup
- Juan López: 1950 FIFA World Cup
- Sepp Herberger: 1954 FIFA World Cup
- Vicente Feola: 1958 FIFA World Cup
- Aymoré Moreira: 1962 FIFA World Cup
- Alf Ramsey: 1966 FIFA World Cup
- Mário Zagallo: 1970 FIFA World Cup
- Helmut Schön: 1974 FIFA World Cup
- César Luis Menotti: 1978 FIFA World Cup
- Enzo Bearzot: 1982 FIFA World Cup
- Carlos Bilardo: 1986 FIFA World Cup
- Franz Beckenbauer: 1990 FIFA World Cup
- Carlos Alberto Parreira: 1994 FIFA World Cup
- Aimé Jacquet: 1998 FIFA World Cup
- Luiz Felipe Scolari: 2002 FIFA World Cup
- Marcello Lippi: 2006 FIFA World Cup
- Vicente del Bosque: 2010 FIFA World Cup
- Joachim Löw: 2014 FIFA World Cup
- Didier Deschamps: 2018 FIFA World Cup
Notable World Cup Winning Coaches
Only one coach has led his team to multiple World Cup titles, Vittorio Pozzo of Italy. Pozzo helped the Italian team to back-back World Cup victories in 1934 and 1938, the second and third editions of the tournament. Pozzo’s success was not limited to just the World Cup; he also led Italy to the gold medal at the 1936 Olympics in Germany and two Central European Intercontinental Cups in 1930 and 1935. Overall, Pozzo won 63 of his 95 matches as the Italian head coach with 17 draws and just 16 defeats. He still holds the record for being the longest-tenured manager in senior men’s national team European history, coaching for nineteen years from 1929-1948.
In addition to Pozzo, three other notable World Cup winning coaches are Mario Zagallo, Franz Beckenbauer, and Didier Deschamps. Zagallo coached Brazil to the 1970 World Cup, Beckenbauer guided his German side to a World Cup championship run in 1990, and Deschamps is the most recent World Cup winning coach, as he was the coach of France in 2018. One aspect that all three of these men have in common is they are the only three World Cup winning coaches who also won the tournament as players. Zagallo was a player for Brazil during their 1958 and 1962 World Cups, Beckenbauer captained Germany as a player in 1974, and Deschamps was on the French side that won the tournament in 1998.