Cooper Hector is an Argentine coach and former footballer who currently coaches the Egyptian football team. He was already 61 years old, but so far the athlete is not thinking about completing his coaching career. When Cooper Hector entered the field, he played in the position of central defender.
Football career
Cooper Hector was not considered a star of the first magnitude when he was a player. He was born on November 16, 1955 in the Argentinean city of Chabas. To build a football career, he soon moved closer to the capital. There he joined the club “Ferrocaril Oeste”, with which almost his entire playing career will be connected.
However, as mentioned earlier, Cooper was not a star player or a great talent, so he could debut at the club only at the age of 21, that is, in 1976. After spending only five matches for his native club, the athlete moved to the Independent Rivadavia, but did not stay there for long. During the season he entered the field six times, scored two goals and in 1978 returned to Ferrocaril to continue his career there and become a club legend.
For ten years, the footballer played for Ferrocaril Oeste, having entered the field 424 times and scoring 24 years. Cooper Hector became a real club star, but it is worth remembering that FC was extremely small and usually played in the second division. And only in 1988, when he was already 33 years old, Cooper said goodbye to his native club and signed a four-year contract with Urakan.
Despite his honorable age, the Argentine footballer was a regular player in the starting lineup and spent 132 matches in four years, marking 8 goals. And when his contract came to an end, in 1992 he announced that he was completing a football career.
As for the Argentina national team, he almost never appeared in it. The Argentinean footballer was called up to the national team only three times in 1984, at the height of the game for Ferrocaril, but he didn’t get into Argentina’s application after that.
Please note that in 1992 the football life for Cooper did not end, as he decided to pursue a career as a coach. After passing the necessary training, the athlete received a coaching license. In the summer of 1993, he took the position of head coach at Urakan, that is, at the club where he spent the last four years of his career as a player.
The beginning of the way
Hector Cooper is a coach who was immediately able to show an impressive result. In “Hurricane” he spent only two seasons, but already in the first he practically led the club to the championship. “Hurricane” lost to “Independente” just one point and finished the race in second place. The next season was not so successful anymore and spoiled the statistics for a novice coach who left the club in the summer of 1995 with 21 wins, 19 draws and 23 losses. However, it cannot be said that after this Cooper went down, another Argentinean Lanus club signed a contract with him.
Going to Lanus
Hector Cooper, whose biography is considered in the article, spent the last two years in Argentina, namely in Lanus. This time his results were more impressive, but he failed to win the Argentine Championship. But his team received the CONMEBOL Cup - the second most prestigious in South America after the Libertadores Cup. It was the club’s first victory in the tournament and Cooper's first trophy as a coach.
His results in Argentina did not go unnoticed, so in the summer of 1997 Hector received an invitation from the Spanish “Mallorca”, which he accepted with pleasure, thereby saying goodbye to Argentine football.
Relocation to Europe
So, the new club led by Hector Cooper is Mallorca. What could he achieve in Europe? As in previous cases, in the Spanish club Hector spent two seasons, further improving his performance. In addition, in 1998 he was able to bring the club to the final of the Spanish Cup, where the team lost the great Barcelona in the penalty spot. The following season, Mallorca was able to participate in the Spanish Super Cup, which it won, as well as in the UEFA Cup Winners Cup, in which it reached the final, but lost to the Italian Lazio.
Such impressive success fueled interest in the young Argentine coach, so in the summer of 1999 he received an invitation from Valencia, a much larger Spanish club.
Success with Valencia
Each time, Hector Cooper, whose achievements gradually accumulated, performed a little better than the previous one. So with the “Valencia” the same thing happened. It was with him that the Bats reached a whole new level. In his first year of working with this team, Cooper won the Spanish Super Cup, beating Barcelona. In the same year, he brought Valencia to the final of the Champions League - the most prestigious club tournament in Europe, where he lost to Real Madrid. And the next year, Cooper repeated the achievement, but again could not win, his team lost this time on a penalty shootout of Bayern Munich.
Such results provided fame to the coach in Europe, and in 2001 he headed one of the strongest clubs in Italy - Inter Milan.
Work at Inter
It would seem that the coach’s career is in full swing, and in the near future it will be difficult to calculate which trophies Hector Cooper will collect. Valencia, however, was the last club with which he won at least something. Going to Inter, Cooper showed quite impressive results, having won 57 out of 110 matches in two years - this is his best result in a club career. But at the same time, he was only able to achieve more or less impressive successes only in the second season, when his team took second place in the Italian Championship, losing to Turin Juventus. For the first time, Cooper stayed for the third season, but was fired a month and a half after it started. After that, Hector Cooper, whose career was derailed, decided to take a break.
Return
A year later, Cooper accepted the offer of Mallorca to lead the club again, but this was a completely different team, with which in two years he was able to win only 13 of 54 matches. But, as it turned out, this was not the worst result.
In the summer of 2007, the coach signed a contract with Betis, another Spanish club from the bottom of the table. But he could not bring something new, in fourteen matches the team won only two victories. Naturally, he was fired pretty quickly.
In the spring of 2008, Cooper was able to find a job in the Italian Parma, but even there his results left much to be desired: again, the coach led the team to only two victories in ten matches, so he was fired at the end of the season.
Team coach
After a series of setbacks with clubs, Hector Cooper decided to try his hand at the national teams, accepting the offer from Georgia. However, it all ended very badly. We can safely say that it was a complete failure and the worst result in the career of a coach. Under his leadership, the Georgians played 16 matches, in which a draw was observed in four matches, and only one was won. Already in October 2009, Cooper was fired, after which he returned to work as a coach in clubs.
A new beginning with Aris and a further decline
Less than a month after breaking up with the Georgian national team, Cooper signed a contract with the Greek club Aris. It was there that he managed to prove to everyone that he was capable of something else. In the first year, Cooper managed to get the not-so-strong team into the final of the Greek Cup, where, unfortunately, she lost to one of the country's strongest clubs, Panathinaikos. The second season was far from being so successful, so in the winter of 2011 Cooper left his post, and in the summer of 2011 returned to Spain and headed the local Racing.
In Racing, the worst period of a coach’s career happened, but only in relation to clubs, not national teams. In 13 matches, the team scored 9 points, gaining only one victory, so in November 2011 the coach was left without work.
A month later, he found a job in the Turkish Orduspor, where he worked for almost two years and showed fairly average results with 14 wins in 50 matches. As a result, Cooper was still fired in April 2013 and was unemployed until the fall of that year.
In the autumn, the Arab club Al-Wasl invited the coach, but quickly became disillusioned with his decision. Cooper was able to bring the team only 15 points in 16 matches, which is why he was fired in March 2014 before the end of the season. Al-Wasl was the last club Cooper has coached to date. The fact is that in 2015 he returned to work with the national teams, but this time luck smiled at him.
Work with Egypt
Cooper was unemployed for a whole year, because he could not find the employer with whom he would agree on conditions suitable for both parties. And only in March 2015, he signed a contract with the Egyptian national team, which he immediately began to train. The Egyptian national football team is a much stronger team than the Georgian national team, which Cooper coached earlier. Therefore, it is not surprising that its results were better than several years ago. But hardly anyone expected that his work with this team would be so much better.
Cooper began his work with the national team with five consecutive victories, but the winning streak was interrupted by a defeat from the Chad national team in qualifying for the final of the Africa Cup. It would seem that Cooper again blundered, and he would have to look for a new job. However, he managed in a return match to win a crushing victory with a score of 4: 0 and lead the team to the final stage.
Six matches were played in the group stage, the first of which ended in a 1-1 draw with the Nigerians. But then the Egyptians went much better, and they won all the matches, except for the match with Mali, which also ended in a draw. In addition, the Egyptian Cooper team won two victories in the qualifying games for the 2018 World Cup.
As for the Africa Cup, the Egyptians were able to reach the final, having defeated Morocco and Burkina Faso along the way, but losing to the Cameroon in the final. This was a pretty impressive result, so the Egyptian Football Federation decided to leave Cooper at the helm of the national team so that he could lead her to the World Cup and try to achieve the best results there. His last match with this team to date took place on March 28 this year. It was a friendly match against Togo, which the Egyptians won with a crushing 3-0 score.
Overall result
In total, the Egyptian national team led by Cooper has played 28 matches, of which only three were lost, and five ended in a draw. Twenty fights were won, and this is currently the best result in Cooper's career. His team won 71 percent of matches, and the coach's best result so far was at Inter - 51 percent of fights won. So we can safely say that Cooper found an ideal place to work.