Ernst Happel

Acting

1925-11-29

Ernst Franz Hermann Happel (29 November 1925 – 14 November 1992) was an Austrian football player and manager. Happel is regarded as one of the greatest managers of all time, winning both league and domestic cup titles in the Netherlands, Belgium, West Germany, and Austria. Happel won the European Cup twice, in 1970 with Feyenoord and 1983 with Hamburger SV, managed Club Brugge to a European Cup runner-up finish in 1978, and won a runners-up medal with the Netherlands at the 1978 FIFA World Cup. This is the best result ever for a non-domestic manager in a World Cup alongside Englishman George Raynor's Swedish runner-up campaign in 1958. He was the first of the seven managers to have won the European Cup with two clubs (Carlo Ancelotti, Ottmar Hitzfeld, José Mourinho, Luis Enrique, Pep Guardiola and Jupp Heynckes being the other six). He is also one of six managers—along with Ancelotti, Mourinho, Giovanni Trapattoni, Tomislav Ivić and Eric Gerets—to have won top-flight domestic league championships in at least four countries.