The longest winning streaks in football history

The legendary mark of 26 consecutive victories set by Johan Cruyff's Ajax stood for more than half a century before it was broken in Scotland's fifth division thanks to the goals of a laboratory technician. Or so everyone thought.

Ajax were aware of the impending milestone and celebrated East Kilbride's 3-1 victory over BSC Glasgow in November 2016 by sending a club van onto the pitch. There were 27 cases of beer in the back along with a laptop carrying a video message from club legend and manager Edwin van der Sar. Kilby manager Martin Laughlan gushed: “To beat legend Johan Cruyff's record with Ajax is surreal.”

However, Ajax were overtaken by another British club that same year. Here's a look at all the teams that made it to the official rankings.

Frank Rijkaard was focused on his lingerie company and mulling an offer from the Netherlands Antilles when Barcelona came calling in 2003. Two years later, the legendary Dutch player had entered the pantheon of great coaches with an 18-match winning streak. games that propelled the club to glory in La Liga and the Champions League.

Ronaldinho reached the best form of his entire career during this dizzying run, contributing an all-time high of 21 goals in 18 games. Ronaldinho's two most famous goals came at the Santiago Bernabéu, where even Real Madrid fans stood up to applaud him.

Vanderlei Luxembourg has a divisive reputation. The Brazilian coach led his national team to the 1999 Copa América title, but he became embroiled in a nasty corruption trial when his ex-girlfriend and colleague Renata Alves launched a smear campaign against him.

Luis Figo worked with Luxemburgo at Real Madrid in 2005 and described him as “the worst” coach of his career. However, for Rivaldo, Luxembourg was “the best.” “Everything that coaches in Europe do today,” Rivaldo wrote on social media in 2020, “you already did 25 years ago.” Rivaldo's trust in the Marmite coach no doub
t stems from their two years together at Palmeiras, with Luxembourg guiding the Brazilian giants to a national record 21 consecutive wins in 1996.

Under the direction of Pep Guardiola, Manchester City is no stranger to an imperious winning wave in the second half of the season. However, even the Catalan coach was left baffled by the club's sequence of 21 wins during the 2020/21 lockdown season.

At the time, the longest winning streak in the history of British club football was just 14 matches, first established by Preston North End in 1892, before penalty areas were introduced into the regulations.

The New Saints, known almost exclusively as TNS after being sponsored for years by Total Network Solutions, insisted they had surpassed Ajax's record of 26 wins in February 2024 with a 3-0 victory over Newtown.

However, that sequence included a penalty shootout win that counts as a draw rather than a win according to Guinness World Records. TNS was not impressed. “As far as we are concerned, a win is a win,” read a club statement. The Welsh team, one of only two professional clubs in its division, still rubs shoulders with some of the best in the world.

“I have a very large trophy case full of titles I have won,” Carlo Ancelotti once reflected, “but if I counted the ones I have lost, I would have a full house.”

Real Madrid began their 22-win streak at the start of the 2014/15 campaign, which ended with defeats in the Copa del Rey, La Liga and the Champions League. Ancelotti was expelled from the club that same summer.

“Success cannot be bought,” Bayern Munich coach Hansi Flick once said. “It's rented. And every day the rent must be paid.”

Bayern emphatically delivered the goods throughout 2020 under Flick, claiming four trophies before their winning streak came to an end seven months after it began.

The only downside to Bayern's winning streak was the lack of fans for the vast majority of their winning streak, with 17 of their 23 games played in empty stadiums (or ghost games, as they call them in Germany).

Before Coritiba embarked on its 24-game winning streak in 2011, the club had never achieved more than ten consecutive victories.

Most of Coritiba's victories came in the Paraná Regional Championship, but they also reached the final of the Brazilian National Cup. However, by June 2011, Coritiba's victories had run out and Vasco da Gama emerged victorious.

Jorge Valdano was in charge of Real Madrid during Ajax's assault on European football, but he has long been the poet of football. Valdano once again found the right words, praising the technical and talented side of Louis van Gaal like “beauty and the beast.”

Van Gaal was technical director at the head of a young Ajax. Seven youth players started in the 1995 Champions League final, which was won by a teenager Patrick Kluivert.

The European champions were just one game away from equaling Cruyff's team record but, as in his playing career, Van Gaal was forced to live in the legendary Dutchman's shadow thanks to a goalless draw against Grasshoppers. Swiss.

Few clubs in the history of European football have enjoyed a campaign as successful as Ajax's in the 1971/72 season. Freed from the bonds of the disciplined Rinus Michels, Piet Keizer began dancing on a nearby table when he learned that the coach had joined Barcelona, ​​Ajax gutting everything that crossed his path.

Stefan Kovacs was no pushover, but he loosened the leash, allowing players like Cruyff, Keizer and Johnny Rep to flourish in the purist form of 'Total Football'.

They had done it. A 2-0 victory over Cefn Druids cemented TNS' football immortality with 27 consecutive wins in 2016. However, for the Welsh team, “in the end it was an anticlimax”, according to left-back Chris Marriott. TNS' decisive victory came at the end of December, midway through another dominant season in the Cymru Premier.

“It had been built and then we did it and you didn't really win anything, it's just like a little bit of ink in a book. It's not a trophy, it's nothing like that,” Captain Marriott said. “It was just a pat on the back and something like 'See you tomorrow for training.'”