Below you’ll find a complete list of the 32 coaches at World Cup 2010. You’ll also find their nationality, and their age going into the tournament. Beneath that you’ll find some amateur hour number crunching I did with pen, paper and the calculator on my cell phone to work out a few statistics.
Before you look at the list of coaches and the numbers, do yourself a favour and have a guess at how those numbers pan out. What do you think the average age of the World Cup coaches will be? How many coaches are in their forties? What percentage of World Cup teams have a foreign coach? Which country has the most coaches at World Cup 2010? Ignore the image of three German passports above, take a best guess at those numbers and then read on for the answers…
Team – Coach (coach nationality) coach age
Algeria – Rabah Saâdane (Algeria) 64
Argentina – Diego Maradona (Argentina) 49
Australia – Pim Verbeek (Netherlands) 54
Brazil – Dunga (Brazil) 46
Cameroon – Paul Le Guen (France) 46
Chile – Marcelo Bielsa (Argentina) 54
Cote d’Ivoire – Sven-Göran Eriksson (Sweden) 62
Denmark – Morten Olsen (Denmark) 60
England – Fabio Capello (Italy) 63
France – Raymond Domenech (France) 58
Germany – Joachim Löw (Germany) 50
Ghana – Milovan Rajevac (Serbia) 56
Greece – Otto Rehhagel (Germany) 71
Honduras – Reinaldo Rueda (Colombia) 53
Italy – Marcello Lippi (Italy) 62
Japan – Takeshi Okada (Japan) 53
Mexico – Javier Aguirre (Mexico) 51
Netherlands – Bert van Marwijk (Netherlands) 58
Nigeria – Lars Lagerbäck (Sweden) 61
North Korea – Kim Jong-Hun (North Korea) 53
New Zealand – Ricki Herbert (New Zealand) 49
Paraguay – Gerardo Martino (Argentina) 47
Portugal – Carlos Queiroz (Portugal) 57
Serbia – Radomir Antić (Serbia) 61
Slovakia – Vladimír Weiss (Slovakia) 45
Slovenia – Matjaž Kek (Slovenia) 48
South Africa – Carlos Alberto Parreira (Brazil) 67
South Korea – Huh Jung-Moo (South Korea) 55
Spain – Vicente del Bosque (Spain) 59
Switzerland – Ottmar Hitzfeld (Germany) 61
USA – Bob Bradley (USA) 52
Uruguay – Oscar Tabárez (Uruguay) 63
So let’s break this down. First by how many years these coaches have seen.
Seven World Cup coaches are in their forties. Fourteen World Cup coaches are in their fifties. Ten World Cup coaches are in their 60s. Just one World Cup coach is in his seventies.
Otto Rehhagel is that old man of the group at 71 years old. Even though he only looks about 50. Vladimír Weiss is the baby at 45 years old. The total ages of all coaches combined is 1,788 years. Which is a lot of experience. Average age is 55.875 years old.
Second, nationality. A total of 20 teams have native coaches. Those 20 teams are:
Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, North Korea, New Zealand, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, USA, Uruguay. Well done you guys.
A total of 12 teams have gone foreign, hiring non-native coaches. Those 12 teams are:
Australia, Cameroon, Chile, Cote d’Ivoire, England, Ghana, Greece, Honduras, Nigeria, Paraguay, South Africa, Switzerland. Please try harder next time (though Switzerland gets a semi-pass since Ottmar Hitzfeld is considered almost Swiss by some).
So that means 62.5% of teams have native coaches, while 37.5% don’t. Native coaches are in the majority, but that 37.5% seems like a whole lot of foreigners.
Here are the nationalities with more than one coach at the World Cup:
3 – Argentina, Germany
2 – Brazil, France, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, Sweden
It’s incredible to me that Argentinean coaches are well respected enough to be in demand by other nations, and yet Diego Maradona is in charge of the albiceleste. But perhaps the strangest fact is that there are three coaches at the World Cup who come countries whose team didn’t qualify. They are Sven-Göran Eriksson and Lars Lagerbäck of Sweden, and Reinaldo Rueda of Colombia. And here’s what you’ll want to say if you’re outraged by a foreigner managing your national team. Derka derb.