As Real Madrid and Manchester City meet in the Champions League semi-finals, where do their coaches rank among the best since the year 2000?
Carlo Ancelotti and Pep Guardiola are very different personalities, but one thing they share is a knack for winning football matches, and the biggest ones at that. Between them, the Catalan and the Italian have won four Champions Leagues, 15 league titles and 13 domestic cups.
They will square up against each other again in Tuesday's Champions League semi-final first leg between Real Madrid and Manchester City. Ancelotti is three matches away from becoming only the second manager to retain the trophy in the Champions League era, while Guardiola is desperate to get his hands on Europe's biggest prize for the first time in 12 years.
But where do these two titans of modern coaching rank among the best managers in the 21st century? GOAL decides…
Getty Images10Antonio Conte
Every time Conte takes charge of a team, success instantly follows. Admittedly, he often leaves scorched earth in his wake, as Tottenham fans can attest to, but not many managers can say they have won five league titles across two leagues, restoring huge clubs such as Juventus, Inter and Chelsea to glory after inheriting messes from his predecessors.
The one black mark against Conte is his European record. His Inter were beaten in the 2020 Europa League final by Sevilla and then failed to get out of the group stage in the Champions League, a fate which also befell his Juve side in 2013-14. And he has never gone beyond the quarter-finals of Europe's biggest competition, which is a failure considering the teams he has managed.
AdvertisementGetty Images9Luis Enrique
An uncompromising, combative forward in his playing days, Luis Enrique followed the exact same footsteps of Guardiola by playing for Barcelona, taking charge of the club's reserve team, going on to manage the first team and then winning every trophy imaginable with them.
An idol of the Camp Nou faithful, he had inherited a stale team from Gerardo Martino, but still had a fantastic squad to work with, including serial winners Sergio Busquets, Gerard Pique, Xavi Hernandez and Lionel Messi, plus newer arrivals Neymar and Luis Suarez.
He shook the team up, although perhaps his greatest decision was to back down from a conflict with Messi in January 2015 after the Argentine took issue with being benched. After a tense few days, the pair made their peace, and five months later Barca swept to a clean sweep of La Liga, the Copa del Rey and the Champions League, led by perhaps the greatest front three of all time in Messi, Suarez, and Neymar.
Luis Enrique retained the title in his next season and won the Copa del Rey twice more before taking charge of Spain, reaching the Euro 2020 semi-finals and the last 16 of the 2022 World Cup.
Getty Images8Vicente del Bosque
The mustachioed Spaniard was Real Madrid manager for only three-and-a-half seasons but managed to win seven trophies, including two Champions Leagues and two La Liga titles. He was Spain manager for eight years and won the World Cup and the European Championship. In a remarkably short space of time, he completed football.
But Del Bosque never got the respect he deserved. The day after winning his second title in 2003, he was sacked, learning the news as he was passing through a corridor inside Santiago Bernabeu.
Madrid president Florentino Perez said at the time that Del Bosque's methods were too traditional and that the club were looking for someone more sophisticated, but it took Madrid another 11 years before they won another Champions League. Perhaps those traditional methods weren't so bad after all.
Getty Images7Diego Simeone
Spanish football clubs are not known for being patient with managers, yet Diego Simeone has managed to spend more than 11 years at Atletico Madrid, turning the Rojiblancos from a basket case at risk of being relegated into one of the biggest clubs in Europe.
Atletico have finished in the top three in La Liga in all 11 seasons under Simeone and twice lifted the title. And they have reached two Champions League finals, won two Europa Leagues and one Copa del Rey.
But it's not just about silverware. The fiery Argentine has utterly transformed the club, who now play in one of the best stadiums in the continent. In an everchanging football landscape, when it is not unusual for clubs to change managers three times in a season, the sound of worshipping Atletico fans chanting 'Ole Ole Ole, Cholo Simeone' is one constant. More than a football coach, he is the leader of a religion: Cholismo.