Del Bosque on the verge of history

If Spain retain the European Championship title tomorrow then Vicente Del Bosque will make history as the only coach ever to lift the Euro, the World Cup and the Champions League.

That would be some going for the 61-year-old, who would additionally preside over the first team ever to lift three successive major crowns.

Del Bosque was not around in 2008, when Luis Aragones steered La Roja to glory against Germany. But he has taken up the baton and ensured the orchestra have played on to the tune of success.

Del Bosque will put two feathers in an already well-decorated coaching hat if the Spanish can repeat their win of four years ago.

He would uniquely be able to claim both club and international success while also joining the late German Helmut Schoen, to date the only man to coach a national team both to the Euros and the World Cup.

Yet even before the Spaniard took the helm of a team which prior to 2008 had been among the international game’s biggest underachievers, he had carved his name in the annals of the touchline greats.

He won two league crowns with Real Madrid but also delivered Champions League titles in 2000 and 2002.

Real, of course, rarely take their finger off the trigger when it comes to the managerial merry-go-round and they couldn’t even kick the habit with Del Bosque, who was promptly fired in 2003.

Responsibility for his surprise demise was that of then chairman, construction magnate Florentino Perez.

Del Bosque will have noted with wry satisfaction that in the four years Real could not lift even the domestic crown, the club chopped and changed with seven more managers until Fabio Capello landed the 2007 title and then parted ways in any case.

Ten years after Del Bosque’s sacking, Real have still to add to their Champions League tally of nine crowns.

The moustachioed man from Salamanca has not forgotten his treatment either.

Last year, Perez, by now back as chairman at Real, elected to confer a special club Order on several illustrious supporters, including Rafa Nadal and Placido Domingo, as well as Del Bosque. However, he elected not to accept.

Del Bosque said: “Each of us has our own story. I don’t wish to remember what happened but there is that familiar pain which is the toughest thing of all. If they tell someone he is useless or not good enough, well. Let’s just leave it at that.”

And so he moved on... onwards, and upwards.