HE has managed in a World Cup and taken two clubs to the finals of European competitions – feats that are beyond the scope of the vast majority of coaches – but Roy Hodgson gives the impression that his success has been some sort of accident. Given that his World Cup, with Switzerland, was in 1994 and those finals have been 13 years apart, you may actually believe Fulham's manager.

If ambition has been the mark of Jose Mourinho's career, then Hodgson admits that it has been lacking from his work. Yet, despite it all, he will be in Hamburg's Nordbank Arena on Wednesday hoping to guide his club to victory against Atletico Madrid in the Europa League, in what is Fulham's first ever European final.

"Whenever I leave a job," the man who joined the apparently relegation-doomed Cottagers in late 2007, says, "I have a tremendous tendency – and it's probably not always been intelligent of me – to jump at the first job that comes my way that sounds half-decent and interesting and sounds like an interesting experience.

"I jump at it without thinking 'how does this affect my position on the ladder'? If I'd been a bit more cynical – if I'd thought 'I'm at Inter, or at Blackburn having just left Inter, my position on the ladder is X, I definitely don't want to lose my position' and if I wanted to go higher – I wouldn't have taken the job at Grasshoppers [in 1999].

"I haven't regretted it. That's the strange thing – maybe I should have done. I don't know. They've been good experiences. The United Arab Emirates was a very good experience. I had no notion of the Arab world before I went there. I would like to think I'm better for it. But, if you're thinking that as a coach you should always be looking to take a step up, I haven't done that. I've gone sideways, backwards and upwards again. If you were to do a graph of my career it would look like a Kandinsky painting." Pretty wild, in other words.

You see what he means when you consider what happened after four years in the ascendancy, first due to his work with Switzerland, then with Inter in reaching the 1997 Uefa Cup [they lost on penalties in the two-legged final to Schalke 04], before he moved to Blackburn that summer, and took them into the Uefa Cup as well. However, he was sacked by them in late 1998 as things went off the rails and they were on course for relegation. Then came his ambition-free years: Grasshoppers [of Zurich], the UAE, FC Copenhagen, Viking Stavanger of Norway, and then the Finland national team. Scandinavia was where he had started his coaching career, in 1976.

That high watermark with Inter did not lead Hodgson to thinking he was any sort of Special One. He says: "When I reached the final with Inter my next thought was not 'how can I reach my next final'? I was just anxious to keep working in football and take what jobs came my way. Most of my career, with the one very obvious, glorious exception of Inter, has not been with the types of clubs who get to European finals. At FC Copenhagen, they had never won the league, so doing that was enough for them – they didn't think 'let's get Hodgson, we'll be in the final next year'."

Fulham were not thinking that either when they made their surprise appointment at the end of 2007. Lawrie Sanchez had failed to arrest the slide that started under Chris Coleman and the club turned to the man from Croydon who was available and willing to work in his home country again.

It seemed like the impossible job, with the club's inability to compete in the transfer market seemingly pointing to an end to seven years in the top flight. Yet come the end of the 2007/8 season, Hodgson had rallied his players to give them hope. With three games to go and needing to win every one of them, they were 2-0 down away against Manchester City with 20 minutes left and won 3-2. On the final day against Portsmouth, they won and stayed up on goal difference.

That game against City also served as a template for arguably the key point in Fulham's European adventure, and proof of how effectively Hodgson has drummed his methods into his players. Having lost the first-leg game against Juventus 3-1, the side from south west London clambered back to win 5-4 on aggregate in an epic night that might not be surpassed for drama, even if they win against Atletico.

Hodgson has doubts over the fitness of Damien Duff and their top scorer Bobby Zamora, but few would bet against him pulling off his most impressive feat yet in management.

Europa League Final: Atletico Madrid v Fulham, HSH Nordbank Arena, 7.45, Live, TV3, 7.30