No team coached by a foreigner has won the European Championship -- or the World Cup for that matter -- a lack of precedent which might concern Luiz Felipe Scolari, Sven-Goran Eriksson and Otto Rehhagel.
Brazilian Scolari took his native country to the World Cup title two years ago but now looks after the interests of hosts Portugal. Swede Eriksson coaches England, while Greece are trained by German Rehhagel.
Rehhagel probably holds few illusions that outsiders Greece could overturn the foreign coach jinx but Scolari and Eriksson harbour legitimate ambitions of breaking the mould.
Scolari has the pedigree as a World Cup winner with an unusually unfancied Brazil team in 2002 and could be the man to take Portugal a step further than in Euro 2000 when they ran eventual winners France close in the semi-finals.
Should Eriksson succeed with England it would make an interesting counterpoint to Englishman George Raynor's achievement of taking Eriksson's native country Sweden to the 1958 World Cup final.
Though his team lost to Brazil, Raynor remains the most successful foreign coach at international team level.
Dutchman Guus Hiddink went close when he guided co-hosts South Korea to the 2002 World Cup semi-finals and several others have tried and failed.
The most persistent was undoubtedly the Serb itinerant Bora Milutinovic who coached five different countries at the last five World Cups -- Mexico (1986), Costa Rica (1990), United States (1994), Nigeria (1998) and China (2002).
Though he never progressed further than the quarter-finals (with Mexico), Milutinovic did relatively well with largely unfancied teams until China crumbled at the last World Cup.
One coach who will certainly fancy his future chances will be former German dynamo Lothar Matthaeus, who recently took over Hungary's national team and led them to a surprise 2-0 upset in a friendly away to, of all teams, Germany.
