When thinking about Premier League football, it’s not hard to understand why some of the best coaches in the history of football have most, at one point or another managed in the most competitive professional league in the world. If you look at any football facts website, you’ll see that some of the biggest names in coaching history have all seen their fair share of English football action.
Now, while there’s still a myriad of amazing coaches who have amassed immensely illustrious careers without ever coming to the EPL, there’s something to be said about those who take up the challenge of coaching in the toughest pro football league around. When you see names like Bill Shankly, Sir Matt Busby, Bob Paisley, Don Revie, Arsene Wenger, and Jose Mourinho, because of course, the “Great One” has to be included in this list given his track record with Chelsea, you get that feeling that being a successful and influential coach in English football and subsequently the EPL is not an easy feat that everybody can accomplish.
But nowadays, with the EPL having a slew of some of the most influential coaches in world football, where does Leeds United head coach Marcelo Bielsa stand in that list, and who else is joining him? Let’s take a look.
Marcelo Bielsa, Leeds United
Of course, I’m going to start the list by talking about Marcelo Bielsa. “El Loco” as he is known in Argentina and almost everywhere else around the world is seen by many of the top football coaches in the world as one of the most important masterminds in the sport. He is considered to be a generational coach with a modern vision of the game, and a deep understanding of the ins and outs of how to run a football team that can be compared to what Rinus Michels was to the Netherlands and Johan Cruyff was to Barcelona.
Coaches like Pep Guardiola, Mauricio Pochettino, Diego Simeone, Marcelo Gallardo, and many others consider Bielsa as their main source of inspiration from a coaching point of view. While Bielsa has never truly had a run in any of the top-name clubs in world football, it has been his work in the Argentinian and Chilean National teams, alongside how he revolutionized Athletic Bilbao and gave Olympique Marseille a whole turnaround in the way they practiced the sport that has made him one of the most influential coaches around. If you need any further proof just look at his tenure so far with Leeds United. He took the team and transformed completely, making it one of the most attractive teams to watch, all while finding a way to exploit the true potential in each of his players while maintaining a clear structure of “team first, individualities second”.
Pep Guardiola, Manchester City
Since we just finished talking about Marcelo Bielsa, let’s now talk about a coach that has described Bielsa as “the best coach in the world”, Manchester City’s Josep “Pep” Guardiola. Ever since he started his tenure with his beloved Barcelona FC, Guardiola started a revolution in the world of football, bringing in a modern view of some of the lessons and styles that he gathered from playing under some of the best coaches in the world as a player. His Barcelona team wasn’t just almost unbeatable, but they were probably one of the most elegant football clubs in the world when they were at their absolute best.
Guardiola’s style of offensive, creative, fast-driven, and generous football has made the teams he has coached seem like perfectly timed football machines. After leaving Barcelona, he went on to coach Bayern Munich, one of the hardest jobs for any football coach in the world, only to transform that team into an even more dominant squad that terrorized opponents left and right. Now that he is at Manchester City, Guardiola has made it a point to make Manchester City the strongest and best-playing team in the EPL, with an already illustrious list of titles under his name. While the UEFA Champions League trophy has avoided his tenure at Manchester City, it feels like it’s only a matter of time before he wins the trophy for the team.
Ralf Rangnick, Manchester United
A lot of football fans might be thinking “who is Ralf Rangnick?” and well, it’s understandable. But if you’re a football connoisseur, especially of german football, then that name will automatically ring a bell as one of the most influential coaches in modern german football around. The newly appointed interim coach for Manchester United, following the sacking of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, is known for being one of the most forward-thinking coaches that German football has seen in the last decades.
The styles and formations in which his teams play have been some of the inspiration behind the coaching styles of two very successful German coaches who call the EPL their home, Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp and Chelsea’s Thomas Tuchel. There is a reason why when asked to comment about Rangnick’s arrival at Manchester United, at least for six months, Liverpool’s coach Klopp said that it’s “not good news for other teams”. If you put it in perspective, especially after seeing Klopp’s style as a coach, if there is anybody that can make him feel nervous, then you know that there must be strong reasoning behind that.