As the game-setter and direction leader of a team, the role of the manager is crucial, and many big clubs also aim to have a talented manager. However, due to many reasons, some of the most decorated managers are currently in a state of "unemployment", and this article will take stock of five famous coaches who are idle at home.
Fifth place Flick
Flick, who has been an assistant coach for more than a decade, was not well-known for a long time, so when Bayern Munich promoted him to head coach in the middle of the 2019-2020 season, the decision was met with a lot of skepticism. But it was in that season that Flick's Bayern won the treble after seven years, and the club ushered in another heyday in team history.
After Euro 2021, Flick replaced Loew as head coach of the German team. Due to his successful experience at Bayern Munich, many people also believe that Flick can bring the German team with Bayern players as the team to life. However, due to the lack of success in the team as a whole, Germany failed to qualify from the group in the 2022 World Cup, and Flick also left the German team in a lonely position the following year and has not been out of the mountain to coach.
Fourth place Lippi
One of Italy's greatest managers of all time, Lippi has managed a number of Serie A teams and won numerous honours, including the Serie A title and the Champions League. In the 2006 World Cup, relying on the steel defense trained by Lippi, the Italian team successfully won the World Cup in the face of the negative impact of the domestic "phonegate incident".
After that, the successful Lippi tried to start a new coaching journey in the far east: from 2012, Lippi was the head coach of the Guangzhou team of the Chinese Super League and then the Chinese national team. However, due to the shortcomings of Chinese football as a whole, Lippi failed to help the team change qualitatively during his tenure, and in November 2019, Lippi stepped down as the head coach of the Chinese team. Considering Lippi's age of 75, he should not be involved in football as a manager after this.
Third place Conte
If there is a selection of the most characterful managers in football, then Italian Antonio Conte will definitely be on the list. As a manager, Antonio Conte is accustomed to shouting from the sidelines to remind his players to carry out their tactical intentions, and he will even clash with the opposing manager after the game due to some verbal altercations.
Tactically, Conte has relied on his own unique formation to achieve success, but he has been too persistent in his personality and has been unwilling to compromise in the face of some disagreements within the team. In March 2023, Tottenham officially announced Conte's resignation due to a failed performance and loss of control of the dressing room, and now nearly a year later, Conte still has not found his new home.
Second place Zinedine Zidane
In the middle of the 2015-2016 season, with new coach Rafael Benitez never able to lead the team on the right track, Real Madrid fired the master tactician and corrected the second team's head coach Zinedine Zinedine Zidane. Zidane was certainly a superstar as a player, but there is a question mark over how far he can go in the role of manager.
To everyone's surprise, relying on the prestige accumulated as a player and the study of tactics, Zidane won the Champions League in his first season in charge of Real Madrid, and the Champions League titles in the next two seasons were all won by Real Madrid under Zidane. However, after the end of the 2021 season, Zinedine Zidane, who left Real Madrid, never picked up the coaching whip again, and from the current point of view, he is likely to become the head coach of Paris Saint-Germain or the French national team in the future.
First Mourinho
Jose Mourinho once boasted of himself as "the most special one", both in character and coaching. With his charisma and deep understanding of counter-attacking, he has twice led the team to the top of Europe, and he is the only manager in history to lead the team to win the three major European titles.
But as time went on, Mourinho's overly stubborn personality also made him incomprehensible to more and more young players, whether it was Manchester United, Tottenham or Roma, who had just cut Mourinho, he failed to get a satisfactory result in the end, and it can be said that the next leg of Mourinho's coaching career is still a mystery.