Nations League 2026-27 New Coaches Ranked by Idea, Not Points: Jorge Jesus Leads, Klopp Last

Five of Europe’s biggest national teams walked into the Nations League with a coach who had never picked them before. Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany all changed the man in charge after the World Cup, and a long window of three and four games gave each the first real stretch of time to put an idea on the grass. The table is a crude instrument. The useful question is structural: watch any of these teams for ninety minutes, and how much of the new coach can you already see?

That is the criterion here. Not points and not scorelines, but legibility: whether a side’s shape, its way of making chances and its selection calls already describe the person on the touchline. A team can win while showing very little, and lose while showing a great deal. Ranked that way, the order runs from Lisbon to Munich, and the side all five should be studying is not on the list at all.

1. Jorge Jesus (Portugal) — the idea arrived on day one

Portugal have nine points from nine, and the points are the least interesting thing about them. In Copenhagen they had 46 per cent of the ball and completed fewer passes than Denmark, 449 to 527, yet took 19 shots to 12, ten of them on target, for an expected-goals count of 2.74 against 0.67. That is a design, not an accident. Jesus’s Portugal do not want the ball for its own sake; they want it travelling forward quickly, into a front line built on movement rather than on a fixed reference point. João Félix has scored in all three games. Bruno Fernandes sits behind the runners and feeds them; he set up Gonçalo Ramos and then Vitinha’s header in the 4-2 win. João Cancelo’s opener came from his own interception, a goal that began as a defensive action.

The selection call says the same thing in another register. Cristiano Ronaldo did not play against Norway, left the camp on the eve of the Denmark game, and Portugal scored four without him. The structural reading is plain: Jesus has chosen a rotating, mobile attack over one organised around a single finisher. It is the most complete statement of intent in the window.

2. Zinedine Zidane (France) — control installed, penetration pending

Two games, two 1-0 wins, nothing conceded. In Brussels Zidane handed starts to three debutants, Andy Diouf, Jérémy Jacquet and Lucas da Cunha, without the injured Kylian Mbappé, and France still ran the match, out-shooting Belgium 18 to 12. The foundation is visible. The final pass is not yet. Those 18 shots were worth 1.15 expected goals, plenty of volume and not much danger, and Désiré Doué’s five attempts, one of them off the woodwork, told the same story. The winner came in the 88th minute from a substitute: Michael Olise, on for 11 minutes, took Rayan Cherki’s pass at the halfway line and carried it past four defenders before curling it into the bottom corner.

Zidane’s description of Olise doubles as a description of what France are still building as a collective: “He has a great sense of the game, he anticipates the opponent’s movements, and he knows when to attack and when to drop back.” For now that intelligence lives in individuals rather than in the structure. Italy, next, will test whether control without penetration holds up against a side that has just scored four.

3. Xavi Hernández (Netherlands) — the attack is built, the cover is not

The positional idea is already producing chances in bulk. In Belgrade the Netherlands took 25 shots worth 2.75 expected goals, and Mexx Meerdink, on his first start, scored twice. The problem is what sits behind that structure. Two of Xavi’s three results were rescued after the 88th minute: Cody Gakpo’s stoppage-time equaliser against Germany in his first game in charge, and Tijjani Reijnders’ 89th-minute leveller in Thessaloniki after Greece had gone 2-0 up inside a half. Even the recovery there began from a set piece, Virgil van Dijk heading in Joey Veerman’s corner.

A possession side that keeps chasing games has usually not yet settled its rest-defence: the positions of the players behind the ball that stop a lost pass from becoming a chance against. Five points from three is a fair return. The shape that earned them is half-finished.

4. Roberto Mancini (Italy) — a result, not yet a shape

Mancini’s second spell has produced two different Italys in four days. The first lost 2-0 at home to Belgium in Rome. The second, with eight changes (only Gianluigi Donnarumma, Sandro Tonali and Francesco Pio Esposito kept their places), was 3-0 up in Bursa inside the opening half-hour against a loose Turkish defence on a rain-soaked pitch, and won 4-1. That is a strong response. It is not yet a pattern. Wholesale rotation between consecutive matches is a search, not an answer: the window has shown whom Mancini trusts, not how Italy intend to play when an opponent takes the game to them.

5. Jürgen Klopp (Germany) — unreadable on purpose

Germany sit last not because they are the weakest side but because they are the hardest to read, and their coach seems content with that. Against Greece in Augsburg, a heavily rotated 4-2-3-1 had most of the ball and 16 shots, and lost 1-0 to a deflected Dimitris Kourbelis finish against a deep 4-4-2 block. Four days later Klopp sent out virtually a new squad against Serbia and won 2-0 in Munich: Florian Wirtz hit the post for Tom Bischof to score the rebound, then turned Srdjan Babić to finish the second himself.

Klopp diagnosed the first game better than anyone: “Football needs training, football needs routines. We don’t have enough of that yet.” Of the rotation, he added: “The good thing is that the other team doesn’t necessarily know how we’re going to play.” True. After three matches with largely different line-ups, nobody else knows either. A Klopp side has always been defined by collective automatisms, the triggers that send a whole unit forward together, and those cannot form while the personnel keeps changing. The audition is a reasonable choice for a first window. It is also why there is so little to rank.

The benchmark: Greece

The clearest idea in League A belongs to a coach who changed nothing. Ivan Jovanović has run Greece since 2024; they missed the World Cup, finishing third in their qualifying group behind Scotland and Denmark, and arrived with nothing to dismantle. In their first League A campaign they lead Germany and the Netherlands with seven points from three: a stoppage-time Anastasios Douvikas header to win in Belgrade, the first victory over Germany in Greek history, and a 2-0 half-time lead over the Netherlands in Thessaloniki. The template is not complicated, a compact 4-4-2 without the ball and quick release into Christos Tzolis and the runners, but every player already knows it. Spain, who also kept their coach, make the same point from the top: six points from six and an unbeaten run now at 40 matches.

Klopp’s complaint after Augsburg, that “the Greeks basically only played long balls”, was the sound of a system still under construction meeting a simpler one that was already finished. Routines, as he said, take time. Greece have had two years of them. The five new coaches have had one window, and only Jorge Jesus has used it to show the whole of his idea.

Tags: Portugal, UEFA Nations League, Jürgen Klopp, Zinedine Zidane, Jorge Jesus, Roberto Mancini