You know how it is. You get into one of those stupid internet arguments, maybe on Reddit, maybe just with a mate down the pub, about who the greatest football manager ever is. Everyone shouts Mourinho, Guardiola, Ferguson, maybe even Lobanovskyi if they want to sound smart. I got sick of the shouting. I just wanted the cold, hard, definitive answer. Titles. That’s the only metric that matters, right?
The Simple Plan That Failed Miserably
I started this project thinking, “This is going to take me maybe an afternoon.” Boy, was I wrong. My plan was simple: create a massive spreadsheet, list every manager who’s ever won anything, and tally up their official trophies. I figured I’d just pull data from a few big sports sites, cross-reference, and bam, print the final ranking.
The first step was easy enough. I pulled the lists. Immediately, the problems started piling up. When I started compiling, I realized that everyone defines a “title” differently. Does the data include the Community Shield? The Supercoppa Italiana? What about titles won when the coach was only briefly acting as a caretaker? Do we count titles won in reserve leagues or youth systems if the data happens to show it?
I’m talking major conflict. Site A said Sir Alex Ferguson had 49 titles. Site B said 38. Site C said 50, but included the old Intercontinental Cup which some places categorize separately. Look at Mircea Lucescu—some sources gave him over 30 titles, but many of those came in less competitive leagues, inflating his raw number significantly when compared to, say, Carlo Ancelotti’s more globally distributed, high-prestige haul.
I realized I couldn’t trust anything. I had to build my own validated database from the ground up, verifying every single entry against official competition records and club histories. This wasn’t an afternoon job; this was turning into a full-time obsession.
Why I Kept Digging When Everyone Else Gives Up
Why did I bother? Well, this whole thing started because of one guy. I won’t name him, but he was an absolute muppet on Twitter who kept insisting that the only metric was raw league titles, ignoring cups completely. He had the nerve to say that any manager who wins a domestic cup in a major league is just “lucky” and that only the grind of the league season matters. I needed to prove that titles are titles, and they all count, but that the overall prestige must be baked into the calculation.
I was stuck at home. Had a nasty flu, couldn’t focus on my usual work, so I decided to dedicate every waking minute to this ridiculous, self-imposed task. I began trawling through dusty Wikipedia pages, old club archives, and official governing body records (UEFA, FIFA, various FA sites). I had to create a standardized definition for “major title” and “minor title.”
This is where I started my weighted system. I decided:
- Tier 1 (Heavy Weight): Champions League/European Cup, World Cup, Major National League Title (Top 5 Leagues).
- Tier 2 (Medium Weight): Europa League, Copa Libertadores, Major National Cup (FA Cup, Copa del Rey).
- Tier 3 (Light Weight): Super Cups, League Cups (EFL Cup), lower European competitions.
The sheer effort involved in cleaning up the historical records for guys like Valeriy Lobanovskyi, who coached mostly before the modern internet age, nearly drove me mad. Trying to confirm his titles with Dynamo Kyiv involved translating ancient match reports from sites that were clearly running on decades-old servers. I literally had to use the ‘Inspect Element’ tool just to read some of the dates.
The Unexpected Mess of the Final Data Pull
After three solid weeks of grinding—I mean, I literally dreamt in spreadsheet cells—I finally had my cleaned, weighted list. The initial results were shocking because the raw title count champion was absolutely not who everyone thinks it is.
The person who racked up the most raw trophies was often someone like Lucescu or maybe even Jock Stein. But when I applied the weighted scores, the narrative shifted dramatically. The weight pushed guys like Pep Guardiola and Carlo Ancelotti—who have fewer raw numbers than some of the older generation but dominated the most valuable Tier 1 trophies—right to the top.
Here’s the thing that absolutely blew my mind, and the reason I shared this journey: the data proved that the definitive ranking is impossible. I started with the goal of providing a final answer, but I ended up discovering that the numbers themselves are meaningless without context.
For example, if you look at raw titles, one coach might beat another by five trophies. But if those five are all Tier 3 super cups, and the trailing coach has an extra Champions League medal, who is actually more successful? The data forces you to question the premise.
My conclusion wasn’t a neat ranking; it was a realization that success needs a narrative. The guy I was arguing with on Twitter? He was wrong about ignoring cups, but he was accidentally right that context matters more than the raw number. The process of building this database shattered my initial naive belief that titles alone tell the whole story. I had to create a ranking system just to prove the ranking system was flawed. That’s the real takeaway from this brutal, data-heavy journey.