Berti Vogts Back in Work!

That’s right, Berti Vogts is once again employed as an international football manager. I know it’s April Fool’s Day, but I’m pretty sure this is serious. After managing Germany, Scotland, Kuwait and Nigeria with varying degrees of success (success: he won Euro ‘96 with Germany on English soil, failure: everything before and since) Vogts is giving international management another crack with Azerbaijan.

Tough task too. Azerbaijan finished bottom of Euro 2008 Qualifying Group A, with five points and a goal difference of -22. When World Cup 2010 Qualifcation begins later this year, Azerbaijan will be long long long shots to qualify. But they will have two big games. One against Russia (big because Azerbaijan was part of the USSR and Germany are Vogts’ home nation.)

The most interesting thing about Vogts is that despite his various problems - his tilt at the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations with Nigeria has to go down as a disaster - he seems committed to international management. Vogts got his start as Germany’s U20 manager and worked his way up to the senior team from there. His club management career consists of one season with Bayer Leverkusen in 2000-2001. He finished fourth in the Bundesliga but then lost a Champions League preliminary qualifier and was sacked.

It’s possible Vogts favours international management for the nice long breaks between games, and the Azerbaijan job for the relative lack of pressure. Seems Vogts just wants an easy life. But having presumably offered him a decent wage, the Azerbajian FA must be expecting something better than a bottom of the group finish, so Vogts might find the going harder than he expected.