Berti Vogts - Managerial Career

Managerial Career

After his playing career ended, he became a coach for West Germany's under-21 national team, and continued in that role until 1990. Starting in 1986, he became an assistant manager of the senior national side. In 1990, he was promoted to manager of the national team as successor of Franz Beckenbauer. After the final match, Beckenbauer famously said that the reunified Germany will "probably be unbeatable for years", a statement which turned out to be a burden for Vogts during the upcoming years. Although Vogts led the German national team to a Euro 1992 runner-up place and a Euro 1996 win, two World Cup quarter-final defeats in 1994 and 1998 are also on his sheet. He stepped down as manager in September 1998.

After some time out of managing, he was appointed manager of Bayer Leverkusen in November 2000. The following May, despite earning Bayer Leverkusen Champions League qualification, he was sacked. He became manager of the Kuwait national team in August 2001.

After six months with Kuwait, Vogts resigned to assume the position of manager of the Scottish national team. In attempting to qualify for the 2004 European Championships, Vogts took Scotland to a play off place. In the play offs Scotland were drawn against the Netherlands and Vogts led them to a 1–0 victory at Hampden Park, but the Netherlands beat Scotland 6–0 in the return leg. The Scottish press became notably more hostile towards Vogts following a series of defeats in friendly matches which caused the team to drop to a record low in the FIFA World Rankings. An October 2004 draw with Moldova essentially put paid to Scotland's hopes of qualifying for the 2006 World Cup, and Vogts resigned the following month, with a year and a half remaining on his contract, citing "disgraceful abuse".

In January 2007, Vogts was appointed manager of Nigeria and signed a four-year contract. After a thirteen-month spell, he resigned following a poor performance at the 2008 African Nations Cup. In April 2008, he was appointed manager of Azerbaijan on a two-year contract. He extended his contract with AFFA until the end of qualifying of Euro 2012 after successful results.