Roy Hodgson, the most current of the England national football team managers, has been enjoying a successful run with the Three Lions in the 2016 European Championship qualifying stages. But who was England's best manager ever? Who do English football fans still respect and remember fondly? And on the other side of the coin, which managers failed to make much an impact with the national team, but have gone on to be successful in other avenues? Read on for a brief history of English national team coaches!

The Top Dog

It would be impossible to have a conversation about England's all-time greatest managers without talking about Alf Ramsey. While Ramsey's version of the Three Lions failed to qualify for three major tournaments (the 1964 and 1972 European Championships, and the 1974 World Cup), he also coached the English team to their only World Cup victory in history.

Ramsey was an English hero in 1966 when he guided the Three Lions through a top group stage finish (over Uruguay, Mexico, and France), and a successful knockout stage run (wins over Argentina and Portugal) to reach a final against West Germany.

By this point in World Cup history, West Germany had already won a World Cup title-eight years earlier, at the 1954 cup in Switzerland. But in 1966, with the World Cup actually taking place in England, the Three Lions finally pulled out all the stops. The English side beat Germany 4-2 in an extra-time battle, with the great Geoff Hurst providing a hat trick (with two of the goals actually scored in extra time) to win the game.

Just like that, Alf Ramsey was immortalized in the annals of England's national football coaches. Not only had he guided the soccer squad to their first World Cup, but he'd done it in front of adoring home audiences, and with one of the most glorious and exciting finals in international tournament history. He truly is England's "top dog."

The Master of Longevity

If Ramsey is remembered as the manager who won England a World Cup, his predecessor, Walter Winterbottom, is lionized for just how long he stuck around. Nowadays, most English football managers-and national team managers in general-only tend to hold their posts for a couple of years.

Not so with Winterbottom, who managed the wearers of the England soccer jersey for 16 years. Hired as England's first-ever full-time manager in 1946, Winterbottom coached the team until Ramsey took over the post in 1963. In that time, he took the soccer squad to four World Cups (including two group stage runs and two quarterfinal finishes) and coached 139 games.

To put that figure in perspective, since 1990, the England manager with the most games coached was Sven-Goran Eriksson, who tallied 67 between 2001 and 2006. Winterbottom has at least 26 games on every other leader in Three Lions history (Ramsey is second, with 113), and as such, also has tenure records for total wins (78) and total losses (33). He will probably never be matched in terms of longevity.

The Revolving Door

In recent years, England has seen something of a revolving door of managers. The shortest-tenured managers in the history of the football team (not counting caretakers like Joe Mercer, Howard Wilkinson, and Peter Taylor) were Kevin Keegan and Steve McClaren, with 18 games apiece.

McClaren, unlike Keegan, didn't get England into a major tournament (his squad failed to qualify for Euro 2008), but had a higher success rate, winning 50% of the 18 games he coached. McClaren, of course, has been in the news as of late as the new manager for Newcastle United, where he will try to turn things around after a dismal 2014 2015 season.

Where will Roy Hodgson fit in the history of English soccer managers? Will he be remembered for 2014's poor World Cup campaign, or could he potentially win the Three Lions their first Euro title in 2016? Only time will tell, but you can root for his squad today with a new England football shirt from Soccer Box.