World Cup Betting: Capello is top of the rich list but omens are bad for England

World Cup News / Ben Lyttleton / 13 April 2010 / Leave a comment Free £25 Bet

Joachim Lowe is paid a "measly" €2.5m a year

Fabio Capello is paid almost three times more than the next highest-paid manager at the World Cup but history says no foreign manager has ever won the tournament. The omens are bad for England, says Ben Lyttleton.

"In fact, if the salary table of international coaches, recently published by
Portuguese magazine Futebol Finance, offers any inkling into how well teams
will do, it could be an all-Italian final with England’s Fabio Capello the
highest-paid at €8.8m with Marcello Lippi second with €3m."

Three of the four Champions League semi-finalists owe at least some of their presence in the tournament to a Dutch influence: Barcelona to the style of play first implemented by former coach Johan Cruyff, Internazionale to the skills of Wesley Sneijder, honed at the Ajax youth academy, and Bayern Munich to the coaching ability of Dutchman Louis van Gaal, a former Champions League-winning coach with Ajax in 1995.

The Dutch influence in coaching was certainly 'on-trend' at the 2006 World Cup as well, where no nation provided more coaches to competing teams: aside from Marco van Basten in charge of the Holland team, there was also Guus Hiddink (Australia), Leo Beenhakker (Trinidad & Tobago) and Dick Advocaat (South Korea). But these things work in cycles and that none of them reached the quarter-finals does not really explain why that number has dwindled to two Dutch coaches who will be in South Africa: Bert van Marwijk (Holland) and Pim Verbeek (Australia).

So which country will provide the most coaches to World Cup teams this summer? The answer will come as a surprise: it's not Italy, where there is a clear trend, in English football at least, for their coaches; nor is it France, who have a huge coaching disapora and dominated dug-outs at the African Nations Cup; it's not even Spain, whose football is dominating Europe at the moment and has a rich crop of up-and-coming coaches such as Unai Emery, Ernesto Valverde, Marcelinho and Quique Sanchez Flores.

The answer is in fact Germany, with Jogi Low (Germany), Ottmar Hitzfeld (Switzerland) and Otto Rehhagel (Greece). It's dangerous to read too much into this, especially given the fact that all three have had problems in the build-up to the tournament: Low has lost favour with the German public after a contract row in which his lucrative demands were revealed; Hitzfeld recently spoke of the problems he has adapting to the slow nature of
international football, particularly the inability to pick over previous performances until the next match; and Rehhagel was forced to deny reports he was unhappy at a proposed 30% salary reduction if he extends his contract beyond this summer.

More significant - and more worrying - is the lack of any Briitsh manager on the list of bosses, and the anomaly that two countries without a great coaching history are also providing two bosses this summer: Sweden and Serbia. The Serbs will go to head-to-head as Raddy Antic's Serbia take on Milovan Rajevac's Ghana - Serbia are ([2.42]) to win, with Ghana ([3.4]) - in Group D's opening game while the Swedes seem to have replaced Frenchmen as African teams' nationality of choice: in the last few weeks, Ivory Coast appointed Sven-Goran Eriksson while Nigeria appointed Lars Lagerback. Both
have a proven international record and will be richly rewarded for their efforts, with Eriksson's reported salary €1.9m and Lagerback's €1.1m.

In fact, if the salary table of international coaches, recently published by Portuguese magazine Futebol Finance, offers any inkling into how well teams will do, it could be an all-Italian final with England's Fabio Capello the highest-paid at €8.8m with Marcello Lippi second with €3m. England are ([7.4]) to win and Italy ([15.5]). Next comes Low, €2.5m and his Germany side at ([15.5]) and Eriksson, Van Marwijk and Hitzfeld all come before you get to tournament favourites Spain ([5.2]) and Vicente del Bosque, at €1.5m.
Incidentally, Brazil coach Dunga is 11th on the list, with an annual €800,000.

England is the only major side at this World Cup to have a foreign coach, while the FA who appointed him must have known that no foreign coach has ever won the competition before. What happens this summer could determine the next trend in international coaching: an England win and other nations may follow suit; another team win and then you can be sure an Englishman will follow Capello in charge of the team.