Five great players who became good managers

There is an old footballing cliché that says that great players can never become great managers. Whilst that holds true most of the time, there are some, who are an exception to that role and manage to have a stellar career in both aspects.

This article will look at the five best players, who, in my opinion managed to make the smooth step up from playing into management. This is not meant to be a definite list and there are those who have been successful, but have not managed to maintain that over a length of time. Case in point, would be someone like Frank Rijkaard, who had an amazing short spell at Barcelona, but wasn’t able to replicate that anywhere else. If you feel that there is someone that I missed out, feel free to comment below.

5. Kevin Keegan

As a player, Keegan was arguably the first English player to have the paparazzi hound him 24*7 and was the first proper “superstar”. He started his career at Scunthorpe United, but made his name at Liverpool, where he won three First Division titles, the UEFA Cup twice, the FA Cup and the European Cup once. He then moved to Germany to play for Hamburg, with whom he won the Bundesliga once, whilst finishing as a losing finalist in both the European Cup and the European Super Cup. After three hugely successful years, which saw him named European Footballer of the Year twice, in 1978 and 1979, he moved backed to England and finally retired from football in 1984 having been capped 63 times for England, scoring 21 goals.

After an illustrious playing career came to a close, he switched to management and has unique accomplishment of having won promotion at Newcastle, Fulham and Manchester City in his first full season with all three clubs. He was hugely successful at Newcastle, where he helped them finish runners up in the Premier League twice whilst winning the manager of the month award five times. Whilst he is well known for his time as manager of the England national team, for all the wrong reasons, he also managed Newcastle United, Fulham and Manchester City with varying degrees of success.