Sportskeeda Football Awards 2016: Manager of the Year 2016

#8 Lars Lagerback/Heimir Hallgrímsson: Total Score = 5 (Experts pick 9, Fans vote 8 tied)

Lagerback and Hallgrimsson hug it out during the Euro 2016 fairytale

The Swede and The Dentist – as unlikely a combination as you will ever find managing an Icelandic football team. The Swede was the experienced one, having managed Sweden for nigh on a decade – guiding them to the World Cup in 2002 and 2006 and managing the monumental ego of Zlatan Ibrahimovic along the way – while the Dentist was a run-of-the-mill manager who had been mucking about in the depths of the Icelandic league before being picked by KSI (The Icelandic Football Federation) to manage the team alongside Lagerback.

Together the two worked wonders – first by guiding them to Euro 2016 proper navigating a tough-as-nails group stage that included Netherlands, Turkey and the Czech Republic and then doing the impossible and taking them to the quarterfinals by first topping in a group that included Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal, David Alaba’s Austria and a resurgent Hungary. They have a wonderful win % of 43.24% and an even more impressive unbeaten record of 64.86%.

Lagerback’s footballing philosophy is simple – play to win. As he said “I don’t like it when people talk about entertaining or attractive football. For me, there is only good or bad football. It is all very subjective. Is it entertaining to see a team pass the ball around forever, similar to Barcelona?

“Or is it entertaining when the ball gets into the penalty area and you have an opportunity to score? I’d rather see a team play ‘good football’ and by that, I mean a way of playing that gives you the best chance of winning the game.”

He along with the Vikings of Iceland may have won nothing by the way of silverware, but that philosophy did win them the hearts of the football loving world.