Club

His very first coaching position he held at the age of 30 in 1967–68, when he took Rot-Weiss Essen to the second place in the western division of Germany's Level 2 league and thus to the promotion tournament, where the club ended up losing out against Hertha Berlin.

The next ten years he shared evenly with engagements with Eintracht Frankfurt and 1. FC Kaiserslautern. In the Bundesliga these clubs remained on mediocre levels during his tenure. With Kaiserlautern he reached the German Cup final of 1976, losing 0–2 to Hamburger SV.

He achieved his only trophy when he won the UEFA Cup with Bayer Leverkusen. In the finals, Leverkusen came back from 0–3 away to Espanyol to win the eventual penalty shoot-out at home.

He was also runner-up in the German Championship of 1993 with Bayern Munich.

International

Ribbeck was originally considered as a candidate for the national team manager role after the resignation of Helmut Schön in 1978. Instead, Jupp Derwall was selected and it was not until 20 years later on 9 September 1998^[1] that Ribbeck emerged from retirement to take over the Germany national team when other candidates had declined. At 61, he was the oldest appointee to the job.

Ribbeck's two-year tenure marked the worst period in the modern history of Germany's national side. Ribbeck resigned on 21 June 2000 after a string of disappointing results culminating in a group stage exit from Euro 2000.^[2] During that tournament, Ribbeck had rejected calls from Oliver Bierhoff, Oliver Kahn, Jens Nowotny and Mehmet Scholl to drop aging sweeper Lothar Matthäus. Ribbeck had insisted that Matthäus would earn his 150th cap, while threatening any rebellious national team members with a fine or exclusion from the squad.^[3]

His results as Germany's coach were ten wins, six draws and eight losses, the worst managerial performance of all time for a coach of the Germany national team.^{[citation needed]}

Manager

Bayer Leverkusen

• UEFA Cup: 1987–88