Every England manager since 1966 ranked

Ramsey said it in 1963, the year he got the job. England would win the World Cup. Everyone in the room nodded and moved on and assumed it was manager talk. It was not manager talk.

Fourteen managers after him. One of them took England to back-to-back European finals. One resigned in a toilet. One stood under an umbrella on the worst night of his career and was sacked the next morning. One flew to Dubai mid-campaign and told everyone about it in a newspaper column before the FA even knew he was leaving.

This is all of them, from worst to best. Win percentage barely features. Capello’s is the highest of anyone who ever did the job permanently and he’s not in the top four. The only thing that matters at international level is what you do in a tournament. Here is the verdict.

For the full story of how England have performed across every World Cup they have entered, our complete guide to England’s World Cup history covers every campaign in detail.

Allardyce, one game, 67 days, and Mercer the caretaker are both off the list.

THE RANKING CRITERIA

Tournament performance first. What the manager did with the squad available to them second. Context third. Win percentage last.

13. STEVE McCLAREN (2006-2007) 18 games · 50% win rate

November 2007. Wembley. Croatia had already qualified. England needed not to lose. Lost 3-2 with their manager standing pitchside with an umbrella above his head, which the television cameras returned to every few minutes as the rain came down and the score stayed wrong. By the time the whistle went the image was already the story. He was gone in the morning.

He dropped Beckham. Dropped Campbell. Made decisions that did not work and then ran out of road to make new ones. Eighteen games. Sacked. The umbrella.

12. DON REVIE (1974-1977) 29 games

Didn’t qualify for Euro 1976. Was losing the 1978 World Cup qualification campaign. And then, while England were still in the middle of it, flew to the UAE, signed a contract for something in the region of £300,000, and the country found out when the Daily Mail ran his column about it.

The FA took him to court trying to ban him from English football. He won. That was the end of the story because the qualifying record told the rest, two campaigns, neither completed, one abandoned while he was still technically in the job.

Revie at Leeds was different. Whatever he had there did not come with him and when it went wrong he bolted, which is the part that stuck.

11. KEVIN KEEGAN (1999-2000) 18 games

Lost 1-0 to Germany at the old Wembley. World Cup qualifier. After the whistle he walked into the toilets and didn’t come out for a while. Then he called a press conference and quit. “I’m just not good enough.” The room said nothing because there was nothing to say.

Before that, Euro 2000. Qualified, went to Belgium, beat Germany, lost to Portugal and Romania, came home after the group stage. All the enthusiasm in the world and nowhere near enough tactical substance underneath it.

10. GRAHAM TAYLOR (1990-1994) 38 games

One defeat in the first 23. Qualified for Euro 92. Then six losses in the next 15 and a World Cup qualifying campaign that ended against San Marino, who scored in the eighth second, and England won 7-1 and still went home.

The documentary. If you have not watched it, watch it. Taylor speaking to linesmen in a way nobody in football speaks to linesmen. The Gazza substitution against Sweden. “Do I not like that” going into the language permanently. Taylor was a good manager at club level. The international game was a different thing and eventually that became impossible to argue with.

9. ROY HODGSON (2012-2016) 56 games

Euro 2012 quarter-final. 2014 World Cup group stage. Then Nice, 2016, last 16 of the Euros, England vs Iceland.

Iceland. Population 330,000. Part-time dentist on the coaching staff. England went ahead and then lost 2-1 and Hodgson resigned right there at the press conference in France, not even getting on the plane home first. Three quarter-finals are in the record. So is Iceland. The numbers do not tell you which one people remember.

8. RON GREENWOOD (1977-1982) 55 games

Revie left and Greenwood came in and spent half a decade making the job functional again. Euro 1980. The 1982 World Cup in Spain. The whole tournament without a defeat.

Draws, though. Three in the second group phase and you needed wins. England came back from Spain having not lost and not progressed, which is an extremely Ron Greenwood way to go out, competent, solid, slightly frustrating. He left the job cleaner than he found it after the Revie disaster. That was not nothing.

7. SVEN-GORAN ERIKSSON (2001-2006) 67 games

Munich first. September 2001. Floodlit. Germany at home, a World Cup qualifier, and England won 5-1 with Owen getting three of them and Eriksson on the touchline looking unbothered, like this happened all the time for him, which at club level it more or less had.

2002: Brazil, quarter-final. 2004: Portugal, quarter-final, penalties. 2006: Portugal again, quarter-final, penalties, Rooney off, Ronaldo winking. Beckham and Gerrard and Lampard and Scholes and Ferdinand and Owen and Rooney, all on the pitch in the same years, and three quarter-finals was the ceiling. Getting further would have been better. Three consecutive quarter-finals, for England, is not a failure.

6. TERRY VENABLES (1994-1996) 23 games · 62.5% win rate

Euro 96 is still there, that summer, sitting differently from everything else England have done in the last thirty years. Gazza chesting it down against Scotland, flicking it over Hendry’s head, letting it drop, hitting it on the volley before anyone worked out what was happening. Shearer scoring in every game. The 4-1 against the Netherlands. Wembley full and actually believing it, which was unusual.

Penalties against Germany. Southgate’s kick going the wrong way. Venables left not long after and eventually ended up running a hotel in Spain. El Tel. Only 23 games. If it had gone on longer something interesting might have happened.

5. FABIO CAPELLO (2008-2012) 42 games · 66.7% win rate

Ten qualifying games for the 2010 World Cup. Not one defeat. Players slightly frightened of him. Press loved him. Win rate of 66.7%, highest ever recorded by a permanent England manager. The squad looked organised and hard to break down and like they knew what they were doing.

Then: 1-1 with the USA. Algeria at half-time and the Wembley crowd booing their own players down the tunnel. A Lampard shot that crossed the line against Germany, clearly, and the referee waved it away, and England lost 4-1 and went home. The players who had looked so controlled for two years looked like they had never met each other. Capello quit before Euro 2012. The qualifying numbers are real. South Africa is also real.

4. GLEN HODDLE (1996-1999) 28 games · 60.7% win rate

More tactically interesting than anything England had tried since Ramsey. The 1998 squad was put together with some thought behind it. The 5-2 over Hungary. A structure that had a purpose. The Argentina match in Saint-Etienne had Owen’s goal, which people are still bringing up, and Beckham kicking Simeone and getting sent off, and then penalties and the same ending as before.

Then an interview in January 1999 where Hoddle said what he said about disability and sin and the FA ended his contract the same week. Three years of interesting football and a completely self-inflicted exit at the end of it.

3. BOBBY ROBSON (1982-1990) 95 games · 50% win rate

The 50% tells you nothing useful. Mexico 1986 and Maradona, the hand and then the other goal four minutes later that nobody could do anything about. Italia 90 and Gazza crying because a booking meant he would miss the final if England got there, and then Pearce and Waddle missing penalties against West Germany, and Robson watching his side finish fourth when it could have been more.

The FA told him before the tournament that he was leaving. He knew by the time he landed in Italy that it was his last campaign. He nearly won the whole thing. Then PSV, Dutch title in his first season. Then Barcelona, Cup Winners’ Cup. Letting Robson go is one of those decisions that looks worse the more time passes.

2. GARETH SOUTHGATE (2016-2024) 102 games · 59.8% win rate

He took the job after Allardyce lasted 67 days and Hodgson quit at a press conference in Nice and everything around England felt like it was falling apart. The squad was a mess. The public had stopped caring the right way.

2018, World Cup semi-final. 2021, European Championship final. 2022, World Cup quarter-final against France who reached the final themselves. 2024, European Championship final again. Finals, combined, across the history of the England job before Southgate took it: one. Finals under Southgate: three. He beat Germany at a major tournament for the first time since 1966. He got England to their first ever final on foreign soil. The trophy did not come. The four tournaments did.

1. ALF RAMSEY (1963-1974) 113 games · 61.1% win rate

First game in charge ended 5-2 to France. Press not convinced. Before the 1966 tournament he said England would win the World Cup. They nodded, wrote it down.

It did not go wrong. The Wingless Wonders, the shape nobody had seen England use, the quarter-final win over Argentina after which Ramsey physically stopped his players swapping shirts because he thought the Argentinians had behaved like animals. Hurst’s hat-trick in the final. The ball crossing the line, probably. Moore with the trophy. Ramsey slightly apart from it all on the touchline, watching.

After 1966: European Championship semi-final in 1968, World Cup quarter-final in 1970. Then a bad qualifying campaign for 1974 and the sack, which was probably right by that point. The 1966 win was already locked in. No argument needed.

TUCHEL

January 2025. Drew with Uruguay. Lost to Japan. Dallas, June 17. Ask again in July.

If you want to know who he is taking to North America this summer, we have predicted Tuchel’s full England World Cup 2026 squad position by position, along with the best ways to watch every England game live and the rest of our World Cup 2026 coverage.