Sports Administrators

When it comes to great football managers, Jose Mourinho’s name comes right at the top. He is regarded as one of the most tactfully brilliant managers ever, even though his defensive style has at times been criticised. He has had great stints with Premier League clubs like Inter Milan, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.

Vincent Kennedy McMahon is a professional wrestling promoter, currently serving as WWE's chairman and CEO. Often regarded as the most influential person in the history of professional wrestling, McMahon is credited with popularizing WWE. Also a well-known philanthropist, McMahon donated more than $8 million in 2008, giving grants to the Sacred Heart University, Fishburne Military School, and East Carolina University.

A former professional baseball player, Billy Beane went on to become a front office executive, a position which he has used to apply statistical analysis called sabermetrics to baseball. This has proved to be a game-changer as teams are now evaluating players based on this statistical analysis. His career inspired the film Moneyball where he was played by Brad Pitt.

Renowned football manager and the current head coach of Leeds United, Marcelo Bielsa is best known for remarkably improving the performance of the players he coaches. As a manager, his high point arrived when he helped the Argentinean national team bag the 2004 Olympics gold medal and later guided the Chile’s national team to qualify for the 2010 world cup.

Jerry Krause was a sports scout and executive. He served as the general manager of the Chicago Bulls in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for several years, from 1985 to 2003. He won the NBA Executive of the Year Award twice. He died in 2017 and was posthumously inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame later that year. 

Didier Deschamps is a French former professional football player turned manager. He played as a defensive midfielder for many clubs, such as Marseille, Juventus, Chelsea, and Valencia. He was also a French international. He began his managerial career in 2001 and has been the manager of the France national team since 2012. Former tennis player Nathalie Tauziat is his cousin. 

Though born into the well-known political family, Roger Goodell, the son of senator Charles Goodell, avoided politics and stepped into sports instead. The current NFL commissioner, he was instrumental in bringing about significant changes to decrease on-field concussions of players, by introducing punishments for hitting defenseless players.

Former Norwegian football player, Ole Gunnar Solskjær was one of the most successful players of Manchester United and scored 126 goals for it. He famously scored the winning goal against Bayern Munich in the 1999 Champions League final to secure a treble for the Manchester United. Post retirement, he began his coaching career and is currently the manager of Manchester United.

Dutch formerfootball  player Ronald Koeman was one of the stars of the Netherlands national team during his playing days. After his retirement, he became a professional football manager and is currently the head coach of La Liga club Barcelona. Tremendously successful as a head coach, he was made the manager of Barcelona in 2020.

Gianni Infantino is a Swiss-Italian football administrator, currently serving as the president of FIFA. He studied law at the University of Fribourg and worked as the secretary-general of the International Center for Sports Studies (CIES). He later began working with the UEFA and FIFA. He was implicated in a FIFA corruption scandal in 2016. 

Andriy Shevchenko is a former professional footballer who played for the Ukraine national team. One of the greatest Ukrainian football players of all time, Shevchenko scored 48 goals for his national team, making him the all-time top-scorer for Ukraine. He is also only the third Ukrainian to receive the prestigious Ballon d'Or. He is currently serving as Ukraine's head coach.

The third-most-capped Dutch footballer, Frank de Boer was a talented defender who started his senior career with Ajax, winning the Eredivisie 5 times with them. He later also played for Barcelona and Al Rayyan, before turning to coaching. He coached the Dutch national team for a brief while.

Best recognized as the chief strategy officer of NLF's Cleveland Browns, Paul DePodesta played both football and baseball while attending Harvard University, from where he earned his degree in economics. Shortly, he began his career as baseball executive for Cleveland Indians, thereafter serving various other baseball clubs, including New York Mets, before joining Cleveland Browns as the chief strategy officer.  

Vlade Divac is a Serbian former basketball player and one of only seven players in the history of NBA to record 13,000 points, 3,000 assists, 9,000 rebounds, and 1,500 blocked shots. In 2010, he was made an inductee of the FIBA Hall of Fame. In 2019, Vlade Divac was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Born in Portuguese Mozambique, Carlos Queiroz had an uneventful career as a footballer but later soared to fame as a coach. Apart from winning 2 FIFA World Youth Championships with the Portuguese U-20 team, he has also coached teams such as Iran and Egypt and clubs such as Manchester United and Real Madrid.

Initially MLB’s chief baseball officer, Joe Torre has won 4 World Series championships for the New York Yankees, as a manager. He has authored books such as The Yankee Years. He and his wife have launched the Joe Torre Safe At Home Foundation, which helps prevent domestic violence.