One of his greatest achievements was taking the Sweden men's national football team to a World Cup final, and he also managed them to an Olympic gold medal.

His World Cup campaign with Sweden is the best result ever for a non-national manager in the history of the tournament, along with Austrian Ernst Happel's second place with Netherlands in 1978, twenty years after Raynor's.

[8] The following year, Sweden won the 1948 Olympic Games title defeating Yugoslavia 3–1 in the final, in front of 60,000 at Wembley.

Divested of his best players, and belaboured by the constraints of domestic initiative, whereby professionals were barred from playing for the national side, Raynor was still able to qualify the side for the 1950 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, where the team overcame Italy and finished in third place; losing 3–2 to the eventual champions, Uruguay, after they were beaten 7–1 by a brilliant Brazilian team.

The game finished 2–2 (Kurt Hamrin, the Swedish right-winger, hitting the cross-bar in the final minute), against the brilliant Hungarian Golden Team, who had remained undefeated for over four years.

On the journey back to Sweden, Raynor met Walter Winterbottom in Vienna and explained to him how to play the Hungarians, using man-to-man marking to cut out the threat of Nándor Hidegkuti.

Winterbottom did not follow the advice and this, in part, led to England's losing their home record against Hungary at Wembley on 25 November 1953 By that stage, the Swedish FA had decided to allow professionalism in domestic football, but there was still the need to go cap in hand to the Italian clubs in order to confirm the selection of Kurt Hamrin (from Padova) and Liedholm (at A.C. Milan) and there was still a need to convince the Swedish public of the need to play 'foreigners' in the national side.

"[9] Raynor managed Sweden to the final against Brazil; a 3–1 win against 1954 FIFA World Champions West Germany confirmed their quality.

[11] Nine years after these triumphs, Raynor was made redundant after a seven-month stint managing Doncaster Rovers in the English Fourth Division.