ImagesPA; Getty Images35 BILL n ICHOLSOn
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KENNY DALGLISH
As a Celtic and Liverpool
player, Dalglish won 10
of 15 league titles from 1972-86;
latterly, when he was also managing the
Reds. As player-gaffer, King Kenny couldn’t
kick his winning habit: he nabbed another
two titles at Anfield before his shock exit in
February 1991, only to join ambitious
Blackburn in October – then mid-table in the
second tier. Four years on, Kenny’s rampant
Rovers were top-flight champions for the
first time in eight decades.34
VIKTOR MASLOV
Maslov is the least-known
pioneer in football history.
Who invented pressing? Guilty. In
the late-50s, almost every major football
team on the planet played a 4-2-4 formation- but the Russian spied an opportunity. He
became the first coach to use 4-4-2, handing
his Dynamo Kiev side a numerical
advantage. It earned Maslov four Soviet
league winners’ medals and six cups with
three teams – but ultimately, his everlasting
imprint on football.
32
JUPP HEYNCKES
Such are his mysterious
healing powers, Heynckes’
name is still suggested every time
Bayern Munich hit a rocky patch. He broke
his retirement in October 2017 to help
deliver the Bundesliga after Bayern’s shaky
start, having remained revered as the
mastermind behind their unprecedented
league, cup and European treble in 2013.
Heynckes is a bona fide legend in Bavaria –
but also sealed Real Madrid’s first European
Cup triumph for 32 years in 1998.31
HELMUT SCHON
Germany’s consistency at
international tournaments can be
traced all the way back to Schon. The
former forward led West Germany between
1964 and 1978; a sparkling spell stretching
six major events. Schon’s sides won two of
them – the 1972 Euros and 1974 World
Cup – finished runners-up in two more, and
came third at Mexico 70. “He only saw the
good in players and people in general,”
hailed the right-back from their 1974
triumph, Berti Vogts, who’d go on to become
a Euros-winning boss himself with Germany
in 1996. Obviously.Bill Nick was not a man of poetry,
according to those who knew him. He lived
in a small, terraced house near White Hart
Lane and was a one-club man – in both his
playing and management career. He only
ever got one England cap, but scored with
his first touch. Looking at Nicholson, and
his modest, kindly, uncle appearance,
there was little that gave away his
extraordinary life.
The Scarborough-born wing-half had
honed his coaching skills as a sergeant PE
instructor in the Second World War, which
robbed him of a more illustrious career.
When Nicholson – who began at
Tottenham on the groundstaff in 1936 –
eventually took charge at White Hart Lane in
1958, the north Londoners lay 16th in the
First Division. When he left them 16 years
later, they had won two European trophies, a
league and cup double, two more FA Cups
and a pair of League Cups.
“He had a steely way about him,”
Tottenham legend Steve Perryman told FFT.
“We hear a lot of new terminology today,
but none of it has taught me anything that
Bill didn’t.”
Central to Nicholson’s philosophy was that
Spurs should play with simplicity and flair. As
a player, he was schooled under Arthur
Rowe’s famous ‘push and run’ side of 1950-
51 – the Spurs team that popularised using
one-twos to keep possession.
While team-mate Vic Buckingham
adapted the style abroad into a fluid
system that later improved a developingAjax, Nicholson merely solidified the key
principles at Spurs when he took over,
demanding that his teams should entertain.
And that they did.
Tottenham beat Everton 10-4 on the day he
was unveiled, scored 115 goals in 42 matches
as Nicholson guided them to the 1960-61
title, and dispatched Atletico Madrid 5-1 in
the 1963 European Cup Winners’ Cup Final.
Amid all the style and success that
followed Nicholson’s Tottenham, however,
he insisted on keeping his men grounded.
He specifically signed Jimmy Greaves for
£99,999, so as not to give him the tag of
being the first six-figure player. His team
talks were similarly humbling: prior to the
Atletico clash, he went into such detail
about the opposition that his side were
desperate to prove to their manager that
they could beat them.
“For heaven’s sake,” midfield skipper
Danny Blanchflower told his gaffer, “You’re
making them sound like world beaters.”
Nicholson transformed his Spurs side
several times during the 1960s and early-
70s before stepping aside in 1974. He
was a revolutionary rather than an
evolutionary, building on ideas he learned as
a player to win. Such ambition was hardly in
short supply.
Blanchflower has credited Nicholson with
his most famous quote. “It is better to fail
aiming high than succeed aiming low,” he
reportedly declared. “And we of Spurs have
set our sights very high; so high, in fact, that
even failure will have in it an echo of glory.”FourFourTwo.com The Managers 25GREATEST
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