10 famous managerial rivalries in football

Managers from opposing camps clash for a variety of reasons – footballing ideology sometimes being the least of them. Successful managers usually have huge egos, and when one successful manager is pitted against another, sparks are sure to fly. There is also a standing dispute between coaches who have learnt their trade as former players, and coaches who have picked up their tactical acumen from coaching institutes.Coaches also often engage in stunts that are meant to intimidate the opposition or take away the heat from their players who might be in trouble. As many have said of legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson, players like to play for coaches who are boisterous and give tall speeches because they then feel they are part of a larger cause; a coach’s confrontational attitude rubs off on his players.Here, we take a look at 10 of the most incident-filled managerial showdowns in modern football, in no particular order. The verdict passed is not a reflection of the results the rivals have enjoyed over each other, but rather a subjective reading of who has come out with the upper hand in terms of psychological dynamics.

#1 Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger

Manchester United and Arsenal were the two best English clubs during the 1990s and until Chelsea arrived as a powerhouse, and the managers of the two teams shared an accordingly acrimonious relationship. Sir Alex Ferguson was the more senior of the two, and he greeted Wenger to the Premier League job with these words – “They say he’s an intelligent man, right? Speaks five languages. I’ve got a 15-year-old boy from the Ivory Coast who speaks five languages.”

Wenger complained that fixtures were drawn up to favour the Manchester team and refused to shake his rival’s hand in the years in between, but finally got the upper hand over Sir Alex in 2002. After Arsenal completed a season double over United, Sir Alex called them over-physical ‘scrappers’, to which Wenger retorted – “Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home”.

Sir Alex continued in his attempts to draw his rival into further psychological battles, but Wenger looked to have got the measure of his opponent by the time he made this statement in 2005 – “He has lost all sense of reality. He is going out looking for a confrontation, then asking the person he is confronting to apologise.”

The two have since been seen being more amiable during public appearances, suggesting they have called their confrontation to a draw. Besides, newer adversaries required attention, who had arrived threatening to knock both of them off their perches.

Verdict: Tie

#2 Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho

Jose Mourinho came to Real Madrid in 2009 with a reputation of winning wherever he went, but met more than his match in the equally successful Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola. For the next two years, Barcelona dominated their Spanish rivals. Mourinho, however, seemed to feed off the animosity between the two managers, while Guardiola grew progressively weary of the intense personal competition he was faced with.

The strain told on Guardiola in a sweary 2011 press conference, where he lost his usual calm demeanour and said – “In this room (Real Madrid's press room), he is the chief, the f**king man. In here he is the f**king man and I can't compete with him. If Barcelona want someone who competes with that, then they should look for another manager. But we, as a person and an institution, don't do that.”

In the 2011-12 season, Mourinho’s ‘come-from-behind victory’ over his rival was complete. Real Madrid pipped Barcelona to the La Liga title, and Pep resigned from his job citing tiredness, taking an year’s sabbatical to recover in a New York apartment.

Verdict: Jose Mourinho

#3 Brian Clough and Don Revie

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Counterparts in the single greatest managerial rivalry in England before the advent of a certain gregarious man called Alex Ferguson, Revie and Clough were both Middlesbrough lads who had played a handful of international matches but have left illustrious coaching legacies. Both managers have taken a club from the Second Division to being champions of the top division of the English League – Revie with Leeds United and Clough with Derby County as well as Nottingham Forest.

Leeds United, under Don Revie, were the best English club in the early ‘70s, but Brian Clough’s Derby County came from nowhere to pip them to the title in 1972 by a solitary point. Clough made it a habit of criticizing the aggressiveness and gamesmanship appropriated by Leeds United, thus making him an unpopular figure at Elland Road. Despite this, after Revie left Leeds United to take charge of the English national team, Clough was brought in as his successor at Leeds.

Clough continued being outspoken in his disdain for the Revie brand of football even in his new job, telling his new wards, “You can all throw your medals in the bin because they were not won fairly”. He had underestimated the reverence Leeds United players still held for their old coach, and his approach to the job alienated several senior players. The team floundered under Clough’s charge and he lasted 44 days as manager of the erstwhile greatest club in England.

A subsequent TV interview (in picture) brought all the bad blood between the two out in the open, with Clough continuing to be aggressively jealous and Revie being derisive and saying Clough is bad for the game.

The movie The Damned United is based on this intense rivalry.

Verdict: Don Revie

#4 Rafa Benitez and Sir Alex Ferguson

Rafa Benitez came to Liverpool in 2004, and for the next six years did a fine job of facing up to Sir Alex Ferguson’s mind games, sometimes even far too aggressively. They were frequently seen as commenting on each other snidely, even when not going head-to-head. This has been one of the most brutal rivalries between managers ever and Sir Alex says in his autobiography that “the mistake he [Benitez] made was to turn our rivalry personal”.

Benitez famously ranted at Sir Alex Ferguson in January 2009 with a list of criticisms which he punctuated with the word “fact” – a speech that has been widely pilloried ever since. Ferguson must have been taken aback at such aggressive tactics taken up by someone other than him. He denied all claims and said that the episode made Benitez look like a ‘silly man’ and a ‘control freak’. He also compared the Spaniard unfavourably to their common adversary, Jose Mourinho, calling him far more ‘astute’.

Ferguson said, “Once you made it personal, you had no chance, because I could wait. I had success on my side. Benitez was striving for trophies while also taking me on. That was unwise.” On being asked to comment on jibes made in Sir Alex’s autobiography, Benitez declined saying he did not want to generate more publicity for the book.

Verdict: Sir Alex Ferguson

#5 Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez

Both Rafa Benitez and Jose Mourinho arrived in England in the summer of 2004, and their arrival meant that Sir Alex Ferguson was no longer the only Premier League manager with an inclination for mind games. Both of them were shrewd tacticians who built their teams around particular strengths available to them, and so Liverpool vs Chelsea clashes in their time were almost like chess games. For some reason, Chelsea dominated Liverpool in the league, but found them to be their nemesis in two Champions League semi-finals, an FA Cup semi-final, and a Community Shield match.

Benitez made a ‘fact’-filled rant against Mourinho as well, calling him a ‘specialist in European failure’. Mourinho let his record do the talking on this occasion. Benitez called Mourinho’s Chelsea ‘a boring, boring team’, to which Mourinho returned the favour by questioning the Spaniard’s track record. In his inimitable dour way, he asked reporters, “How many championships has Benítez won since he joined Liverpool?”

The shadow of Mourinho has continued to follow Benitez wherever he has gone. Inter Milan won the Italian Super Cup and the World Club Cup during Benitez’s time there, but the players did not warm up to Mourinho’s rival, who had been a favourite at the San Siro, and so was dismissed only six months into the job. On the trophies Benitez lifted as Inter Milan manager, Mourinho said, “I expected at least a thank you for the success that I gave him. Ask all the Inter fans what they think of me and him.”

Benitez’s time at Chelsea was not very successful either, and Mourinho blasted him for only winning the Europa League with ‘a team built for other purposes’. The Special One was brought back to replace Benitez for the following season, who was left temporarily without a job before taking over at Napoli.

Verdict: Jose Mourinho

#6 Arrigo Sacchi and Fabio Capello

The rivalry between these two Italian greats is the archetype of the troubled dynamics between coaches who have been former players and coaches who have learnt their trade in coaching institutes. Arrigo Sacchi was a revolutionary tactician who had a vision of a brand of football without ever having played competitive football himself. The crux of his idea was synchronization between movement and positioning.

In 1987, Fabio Capello was replaced as AC Milan coach by Sacchi despite having taken charge of the team successfully, on a temporary basis for six games at the end of the season. Capello’s comparatively superior playing record meant that there were several dissidents who were against Sacchi’s appointment, to which the bald former shoe-salesman retorted, “I never realized that in order to become a jockey you have to have been a horse first.”

The Rossoneri prospered under his tutelage for four years, but he was removed by club President Silvio Berlusconi for being too demanding on club funds as well as on the Milan players in 1991, and Capello was brought in to replace the man who had previously replaced him. He was seen by the media as a lackey, one who would carry out every whim of Berlusconi. Capello’s reign turned out to be even more successful though, he took the core of Sacchi’s footballing philosophy and tweaked it to get even more improved results.

Sacchi continued being unflattering in his valuations of the younger coach in subsequent interviews, suggesting that Capello’s teams did not even try to play good football, and that his success was owing to the fact that he had never managed a bad team.

In a recent interview, Sacchi shared his reminiscences of how calculatedly evil Capello could be, making sure to add, “In the sporting sense of course!”

Verdict: Fabio Capello

#7 Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho

Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho met first as coaches of Arsenal and Chelsea, two teams with vastly different playing styles. The two have accordingly never been able to see eye to eye. Mourinho went on record saying the fixture list favoured Arsenal, and Wenger took a dig at Chelsea’s defensive strategies, saying that a sport is in danger if teams stop trying to have flair.

Mourinho characteristically pointed out Wenger’s trophy drought, saying, “The English like statistics a lot. Do they know that Arsene Wenger has only 50 per cent of wins in the English league?”

Wenger’s most scathing comment on Mourinho came as a response to this – “He’s out of order, disconnected with reality and disrespectful. When you give success to stupid people, it makes them more stupid sometimes and not more intelligent.”

Wenger preferred to toe the sanctimonious line. After Mourinho’s Real Madrid appeared to get their players sent off deliberately, he commented, “There should be sanctions. It gives a bad image of our game.” Mourinho has recently picked on Wenger’s nationality by branding him ‘Monsieur Polite’. This is currently the most interesting managerial rivalry still going strong in the Premier League

Verdict: Undecided

#8 Sir Alex Ferguson and Kenny Dalglish

These two seasoned campaigners have had a long-standing feud running for almost 50 years, since their Glasgow days when an 18-year-old Dalglish was given the duty of marking a robust and accomplished Ferguson in a match between reserves. Dalglish, arguably the best player ever to come from Scotland, was called up by Ferguson, without doubt the best manager from Scotland, to the 1986 World Cup squad. But Dalglish backed out in what the media perceived as a snub of gigantic proportions. He has always maintained he did not make the trip to Mexico for no other reason but a serious injury.

As managers, their first spat to be publicized was in the aftermath of an end-to-end match between Liverpool and Manchester United which resulted in a draw. Ferguson claimed that officials were influenced by Liverpool’s large home support, to which an unimpressed Dalglish replied, “You’ll get more sense out of my baby than him.”

In 1995, Ferguson and Dalglish had a showdown as managers of Blackburn Rovers and Manchester United. With Blackburn closing in on the title, Sir Alex tried to engage his adversary in his famous mind games, suggesting that Dalglish’s side could do a ‘Devon Loch’, alluding to a racehorse who famously pulled up before the finish line when victory had looked inevitable.

Dalglish did a fine job of dismissing the threat, by asking if it was a lake in Scotland and eventually winning the title. Fergie sent the better man on the occassion a letter of congratulation after the season, humorously saying, “Surely your dad must have had a bet on Devon Loch. Mine did!”

Verdict: Kenny Dalglish

#9 Frank Rijkaard and Jose Mourinho

Mourinho has a habit of making the most obvious and direct observations seem like earth-shattering revelations. He said good things of Rijkaards’s playing days but added, “My history as a manager cannot be compared with Frank Rijkaard’s history. He has zero trophies and I have a lot of them.”

Mourinho kicked up a storm with inflammatory comments made in the aftermath of Barcelona’s 2-1 victory over Chelsea in a 2005 Champions League first leg encounter. He alleged that he had seen his opposite number visit the referee’s room at half-time, and that explained a Didier Drogba red card issued in the second half.

While referee Anders Frisk was forced to give up refereeing in the public outrage that followed, Mourinho became an object of intense hate at Catalonia. Chelsea won the second leg of that match by 4-2, and Rijkaard had to be restrained after the final whistle with a scuffle erupting in the tunnel.

The two teams met again in the following season’s Champions League, and Barcelona tasted revenge. Mourinho, not someone to go off silently into the night, deplored Barcelona’s theatrics saying, “Frank Rijkaard is a lucky manager because his Barcelona stars are protected match after match.”

Rijkaard’s reign at Barcelona was soon terminated, and despite being one of the favourites to succeed his rival, Mourinho was finally decided to be not suitable to Barcelona’s playing style.

Verdict: Jose Mourinho

#10 Sir Alex Ferguson and Kevin Keegan

Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United had a 12-point lead over the rest of the table in February 1996, but would blow it by the end of the season and finish second to Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United. The turning point in Newcastle’s doomed attempt is considered to be an emotionally charged post-match outburst of Keegan in which he said,”I will love it if we beat them (Manchester United)! Love it!”

Ferguson was credited for unsettling a rival at a crucial stage of the season, and thus was built the myth of the Ferguson mind games. Keegan’s misery was compounded by a 4-0 defeat at the hands of Ferguson’s team on the opening matchday of the next season. Despite his team registering a redemptive 5-0 victory over Manchester United in October, Keegan resigned from his post midway through the season.

Ferguson’s sneakiness with Keegan has been revealed through a recent interview of Keith Gillespie who was sold by Manchester to Newcastle during the fateful 1995-96 season. “Back then I was a £250-a-week player. He told a bit of a white lie to Kevin Keegan: 'Keith’s on £600 a week at the moment so he’ll be looking for an increase on that'.”

Verdict: Sir Alex Ferguson

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Edited by Staff Editor