This article was published before England's semi-final win over Denmark.
Gareth Southgate sits in third place. His 64.4% win rate as England manager puts him behind only the two legends, Sam Allardyce (100) and Fabio Capello (66.7).
All of which shows the statistics surrounding international reigns can be distorted by friendlies, qualifying campaigns and, in Allardyce’s case, one-game reigns.
In the markers that matter, Southgate belongs second only to Sir Alf Ramsey. They are the only managers to take England to two major semi-finals; perhaps Terry Venables would have done had he stayed in charge and Bobby Robson at least threatened to.
But the case for anointing the current Three Lions boss as one of his country’s two greatest is growing.
Southgate the record-breaker
Southgate is accumulating an assortment of achievements.
He has reached England’s first World Cup semi-final for 28 years and their first in the European Championship for 25. When England beat Belgium last year, it was only the second time they had defeated the side then top of the Fifa rankings.
They overcame Germany for the first time in a knockout game in 55 years. The 4-0 win over Ukraine was their biggest in a knockout fixture. They have five clean sheets in one tournament for the first time.
Include penalty shootouts and Southgate has overseen eight tournament victories. The expansion of competitions makes comparisons a little uneven but it puts him level with Ramsey. Sven-Goran Eriksson won seven, Robson five, Roy Hodgson three - all in three tournaments.
Only Eriksson, with 22, had more goals to celebrate than Southgate's (20). Hodgson got just 11.
Defence backbone of knockout success
During his time as England boss, Eriksson excelled at getting out of groups. His immediate successors did not always even do that, but Southgate’s transformative impact is still most apparent in knockout stages.
For five tournaments, from 2008 to 2016, England did not win a knockout match (Steve McClaren’s inability to qualify for Euro 2008 hardly helped while Hodgson’s team were eliminated from the 2014 World Cup before even playing their third group game).
Southgate is up to four victories in knockout encounters. It puts him level with Ramsey though, as the late knight’s wins included a World Cup semi-final and final, they matter more.
But it is notable how few England managers got any: take out Robson (three), Eriksson (two) and Venables (one) and the rest mustered none between them.
In three years, Southgate has got 28 percent of the knockout wins in England’s long history.
England are often compared with Germany but Joachim Low got 12 knockout wins during his reign; had Germany prevailed at Wembley last week and it would have been Low 13 England 12.
Despite France’s unexpectedly early exit from Euro 2020, Didier Deschamps (eight) has twice as many wins as any England manager.
Achievements should not be underestimated
Before Southgate, England were only a tournament team in the sense that they were usually at tournaments. The 1994 World Cup and Euro 2008 were the only ones they missed since the 1984 European Championship.
There can be a temptation to think of England as one of Europe’s big five: only five countries from the continent have won the World Cup and they have the five strongest domestic leagues.
Yet in between Euro 96 and the 2018 World Cup, 12 European countries reached the semi-final of at least one major tournament. They included Wales, Greece, Russia, Croatia, Turkey and the Czech Republic, but not England.