Guiding a team to trophy glory is the dream of every football coach.
There are some football coaches that have won the most trophies you can imagine, while there are some that got their hand on at least one major trophy in their career.
There are talented, experienced, respected coaches who gave everything to the game and somehow, across decades of management, never once lifted a major trophy.
These are decent football coaches who never won a single or major trophy.
These are not bad coaches. In fact, some of them are among the most beloved and respected managers in football history.
These are the top soccer coaches who never won a single major trophy.
1. Glenn Hoddle
Glenn Hoddle is one of the most gifted footballers England has ever produced, a midfielder so technically superior to his peers that Pelé once called him one of the greatest players he had ever seen.
His managerial career, however, never delivered the silverware his talent as a player suggested it might.
He managed Chelsea, the England national team, Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur, and Wolverhampton Wanderers across a career that lasted from 1991 to 2012.
His closest miss came in 2002 when his Tottenham side reached the League Cup final before losing 2-1 to Blackburn Rovers, and he had previously taken Chelsea to the FA Cup final in 1994 where they were beaten 4-0 by Manchester United.
Despite being widely regarded as one of the most tactically thoughtful coaches England has produced, Hoddle never lifted a single trophy as a manager.
2. Quique Setién
Quique Setién spent over two decades coaching clubs including Racing Santander, CD Lugo, Las Palmas, Real Betis, Barcelona, Villarreal, and Beijing Guoan, always playing the same possession-based, Cruyff-inspired football regardless of the players or resources available.
When Barcelona appointed him in January 2020, the club’s official website described him as a coach who had “not claimed any silverware”, a remarkable statement about someone being appointed to lead one of the biggest clubs in football history.
His tenure ended seven months later when Bayern Munich dismantled his side 8-2 in the Champions League quarter-finals, the heaviest defeat the club had suffered in 74 years.
He led Real Betis to sixth place and Europa League football in 2017/18, their best finish in over a decade, and Villarreal to fifth in La Liga and Europa League qualification in 2022/23, yet still left both clubs without a trophy.
Setién is proof that playing beautiful, principled football does not guarantee silverware, and his career remains one of the most intriguing trophy-free stories in the history of top-level football management.
3. Gernot Rohr
Gernot Rohr is the ultimate journeyman, a German coach who spent three decades managing clubs and national teams across Europe and Africa and never once won a major trophy despite reaching at least one major final.
As a player he won three Ligue 1 titles and two Coupe de France trophies with Bordeaux.
As a manager, the trophies dried up completely.
His most memorable near-miss came in 1996 when he guided Bordeaux to the UEFA Cup final, reaching the showpiece on the back of a stunning 3-0 second-leg demolition of Fabio Capello’s AC Milan in the quarter-finals, before losing 6-1 on aggregate to Bayern Munich.
From there, Rohr coached in France, Tunisia, Niger, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Nigeria, and now Benin across a career spanning more than 30 years.
He guided Nigeria to the 2018 World Cup round of 16 and a third-place finish at the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations before being sacked in December 2021.
At 72 years old and still managing, the trophy he has chased his entire life has never arrived.
4. David O’Leary
David O’Leary’s managerial career peaked spectacularly and then faded without ever producing a single trophy.
He took over at Leeds United in October 1998 and within three seasons had assembled one of the most exciting young squads in European football, built around talents including Harry Kewell, Alan Smith, Mark Viduka, Lee Bowyer, and Jonathan Woodgate.
His finest hour came in the 2000/01 Champions League when he guided Leeds to the semi-finals, where they faced Valencia and became only the second English club since Manchester United in 1999 to reach that stage of the competition.
They lost the semi-final over two legs, and that defeat marked the beginning of the end as financial pressures dismantled the squad.
He then managed Aston Villa for three underwhelming seasons before a brief stint with Al-Ahli in the UAE and never returned to top-level management.
He reached the semi-finals of Europe’s greatest club competition without ever winning a single domestic or continental trophy.
5. Alan Pardew
Alan Pardew reached three separate FA Cup finals across his career and lost every single one of them, a record that tells you almost everything about his relationship with major silverware.
As a player he scored the winning goal as Crystal Palace beat Liverpool in the 1990 FA Cup semi-final, but Palace lost the final to Manchester United.
As a manager, the story was no different.
He reached the FA Cup final in 2006 with West Ham, losing on penalties to Liverpool after Steven Gerrard’s famous 35-yard equaliser, and again in 2016 with Crystal Palace, losing 2-1 to Manchester United after extra time.
He won the Premier League Manager of the Season award in 2011/12 for guiding Newcastle United to fifth place and European football, one of the most impressive single-season jobs in recent Premier League history given the resources available to him.
But across spells at Reading, West Ham, Charlton Athletic, Newcastle, Crystal Palace, West Brom, and ADO Den Haag, Pardew never once lifted a major trophy.
6. Tony Pulis
Tony Pulis built an entire managerial career around defensive organisation, set-piece threat, and competitive spirit, and nobody who worked with him ever questioned his dedication or professionalism.
His closest moment came in the 2011 FA Cup final when he led Stoke City — a club that had never previously appeared in a major Wembley final in their entire 147-year history — to face Manchester City, only to lose 1-0 to a Yaya Touré goal.
Pulis managed Crystal Palace, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Stoke, West Brom, Middlesbrough, Sheffield Wednesday, and the Wales national team across a long career, consistently keeping unfashionable clubs competitive in the Premier League on limited budgets.
He is one of the most effective survival specialists English football has ever produced, but the trophy cabinet from three decades of management remains completely empty.
7. Mark Hughes
Mark Hughes is one of the most decorated players of his generation, a two-time Premier League winner and Champions League winner with Manchester United as a player.
As a manager, however, the silverware simply never came.
Hughes managed Wales, Blackburn Rovers, Manchester City, Fulham, Queens Park Rangers, Southampton, and Stoke City across a career that lasted from 1999 to 2018, working with talented squads at several clubs without ever lifting a major piece of silverware.
His closest moment came in the 2011 FA Cup final when he led Stoke to their first ever Wembley final, only for Tony Pulis, his successor at the club, to end up taking the team there after Hughes had done much of the building work.
He was sacked by Manchester City in December 2009 with the club fourth in the Premier League table, a decision that denied him any chance of competing for the title he had come close to building towards.
Hughes earned deep respect as a developer of players and a stabilising presence at difficult clubs, but the major trophy his career deserved never materialised.
8. Nuno Espírito Santo
Nuno Espírito Santo is one of the more surprising names on this list given the quality of the football his teams have produced and the scale of the clubs he has managed.
The Portuguese coach is best known for the remarkable job he did at Wolverhampton Wanderers, taking them from the Championship to the Premier League and then straight into Europe, playing some of the most tactically coherent football the division had seen from a promoted side in years.
He subsequently managed Tottenham Hotspur, Nottingham Forest, Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia, and most recently West Ham United, working at clubs with increasing resources and expectations.
Nuno Espírito Santo is also one of the best black football coaches in the world.
His time at Spurs lasted just four months in 2021 before a dismal run of results ended his tenure, and none of his subsequent jobs produced silverware either.
Nuno is still relatively young in managerial terms, but despite guiding Wolves to back-to-back excellent Premier League campaigns and two Europa League runs, he has never lifted a major trophy.
9. Alan Curbishley
Alan Curbishley spent 15 consecutive years as manager of Charlton Athletic, a feat of sustained loyalty and competence that very few managers in the history of English football can match.
He took Charlton from the lower leagues all the way to established Premier League side, keeping them in the top flight against the odds for multiple seasons and earning widespread respect for doing it without big budgets or marquee signings.
He briefly managed West Ham United after leaving Charlton in 2006, guiding them to a mid-table Premier League finish before leaving in controversial circumstances in 2008 after a dispute over player transfers.
Despite over 700 games as a manager and a playing career that included appearances for Charlton, Birmingham City, Aston Villa, and West Ham, Curbishley never lifted a major trophy at any point in his managerial career.
He is one of the most respected and underrated managers in English football history, a coach whose sustained competence was never rewarded with silverware.
10. Gus Poyet
Gus Poyet had a distinguished playing career with Chelsea and Tottenham, winning the FA Cup and League Cup as a player before stepping into management and finding that trophies were much harder to come by from the dugout.
The Uruguayan managed Brighton, Sunderland, Real Betis, Shanghai Shenhua, Greece, Bordeaux, and AEK Athens across a managerial career that has spanned more than a decade and multiple countries.
His finest moment as a manager came in the 2014 League Cup final when he led Sunderland, who had been embroiled in a relegation battle just weeks earlier, all the way to Wembley where they faced Manchester City, losing 3-1 in what remained one of the most improbable cup final journeys of the Premier League era.
He kept Sunderland in the Premier League that same season against all odds, a feat of management that earned him enormous respect across the game.
Despite that brilliance, and despite working across the Premier League, La Liga, and international management, Gus Poyet has never won a major trophy as a manager.
If you enjoyed this article, check out our list of the coaches who won the most trophies and our guide to the coaches who never played professional football.
