When England’s footballers trounced Germany 5-1 within the Olympic stadium in Munich on a heat night in September 2001, a group that included Michael Owen, David Beckham and Steven Gerrard appeared to have recaptured the magic that had taken their predecessors to victory within the 1966 World Cup last at Wembley. Watching from the technical space, and maybe as stunned as anybody by his group’s sudden discovery of an ebullient, free-scoring authority, was their new supervisor, a middle-aged Swede whose excessive brow, rimless spectacles and reserved manner lent him the air of a person carrying the sport’s greater calculus in his head.
Sven-Göran Eriksson, who has died aged 76, had been appointed England’s first international supervisor 9 months earlier. He succeeded Kevin Keegan, who had resigned in an emotional meltdown a couple of minutes after shedding to Germany at Wembley, making the brand new man’s success in Munich, in a World Cup qualifying match, appear all of the extra portentous. The recruitment by the Soccer Affiliation of a coach who had cemented his repute with success in Portugal, Italy and Sweden was supposed to convey European tactical sophistication to bear on a flatlining England, and the plan appeared to be working.
The next summer time Eriksson took his group to the 2002 World Cup finals, held in Japan and South Korea. A slender defeat within the quarter-finals to star-studded Brazil, the eventual champions, hinged on a seemingly freakish long-range free-kick by the younger famous person Ronaldinho. However when the group went out on the similar stage within the 2004 European championships in Portugal, overwhelmed in a penalty shoot-out by the house nation, progress was starting to stall, regardless of the emergence of Wayne Rooney, a prodigy given his England debut by Eriksson at 17.
Two years later the group arrived in Baden-Baden, their base for the 2006 World Cup, because the assist act to the Wags phenomenon. The media gorged on the presence at a five-star resort of the gamers’ feminine companions, led by Victoria Beckham and Coleen Rooney, who had been adopted on their procuring journeys by a battalion of paparazzi whereas the gamers educated at their camp just a few miles away. As soon as extra the group might make it solely to the final eight, going out once more on penalties to Portugal in Gelsenkirchen after Rooney had been despatched off.
Within the aftermath of that final defeat the Swede, the best paid supervisor in world soccer, bade farewell to the FA with a speech urging English soccer to take care of Rooney’s expertise. Even those that had been impressed by Eriksson’s early days in England, looking for the key of his success and developing with little greater than his alleged love of Tibetan poetry, had begun to aspect with the critics who considered him from the beginning as a weak, avaricious man unable to convey the mandatory diploma of motivation, self-discipline or tactical freshness to his squad.
His failure to win a match in three makes an attempt was not the one consider a deteriorating relationship with England and its soccer public. The cooling was hastened by accusations of treachery following his clandestine assembly in 2003 with Roman Abramovich, the brand new proprietor of Chelsea, and by the brouhaha following his entrapment by Mazher Mahmood, the Information of the World’s “pretend sheikh”, who surreptitiously tape-recorded his willingness to debate accepting a proposal – bogus, after all – of the supervisor’s job at Aston Villa solely six months earlier than he was resulting from lead England to the 2006 World Cup.
Different tabloid headlines had been extra lurid. He had arrived in England with the publicity-friendly Italian socialite Nancy Dell’Olio, who lived with him in London in a grand home in Regent’s Park. Inside a 12 months, nevertheless, his affair with the TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson, hitherto the UK’s favorite Swede, had been uncovered, adopted by the disclosure of assignations with a Soccer Affiliation worker Faria Alam. Lengthy divorced from Ann-Christine Pettersson, whom he had married in 1977, Eriksson found that his freedom to dwell as he wished was circumscribed by the particular scrutiny to which the supervisor of England’s soccer group is subjected.
Born within the small city of Sunne in Värmland, a province of western Sweden famous for its lakes and streams, he was introduced up within the close by and even smaller city of Torsby by his dad and mom: Sven, a bus conductor, and Ulla, who labored in a textile store. At 16 he made his debut at right-back for Torsby IF earlier than transferring to review electronics in Säffle, the place he performed for SK Sifhalla. Aged 25, and now working as a PE teacher in Örebro, he joined Karlskoga, within the Swedish second division. There he was coached by Tord Grip, who later turn out to be one in every of his assistants with England.
Grip handed on the teachings he had absorbed from two managers, Bob Houghton and Roy Hodgson, who had efficiently introduced English techniques to Swedish soccer – significantly the 4-4-2 formation, with 4 defenders, 4 midfielders and two forwards. When the 29-year-old Eriksson was given his first teaching job, with Degerfors, he took that affect with him. After profitable a divisional title, he was employed by IFK Göteborg, whom he took to league and cup victories earlier than beating Hamburg within the two-legged last of the Uefa Cup in 1982, the primary such success for a Swedish membership.
Benfica snapped him up and had been rewarded with two Portuguese league titles in two years earlier than he left Lisbon to affix Roma, the place after three years yielding a single Coppa Italia success he moved to Fiorentina for 2 trophy-less seasons. A return to Portugal introduced one other league title with Benfica and defeat by Milan within the last of the 1990 European Cup.
In 1992 he moved to Sampdoria, profitable one other Italian Cup earlier than accepting a proposal from the metal magnate Jack Walker to affix Blackburn Rovers, solely to return on his phrase and announce that he was transferring as an alternative to Lazio in Rome. Over the following three years there have been victories within the Italian Cup and Tremendous Cup and the 1999 European Cup Winners’ Cup, topped in 2000 by the seize of the Serie A title.
A number of weeks into the next season, he resigned from Lazio to affix England. His appointment, on an annual wage of £4.5m, was introduced by Adam Crozier, the brand new chief government of the FA. A moderniser, Crozier had been guided in direction of Eriksson by David Dein, a member of the FA council. As co-owner and vice-chairman of Arsenal, Dein had beforehand introduced the French supervisor Arsène Wenger from Japan to revive the north London membership.
Dein believed {that a} moribund England group was equally in want of an infusion of contemporary concepts from a special footballing tradition. Dissenters inside the recreation and the media believed that the England group ought to all the time be guided by an English supervisor – as did Wenger, who had turned down the job. It was not absolutely recognised that Eriksson’s successes in three international locations had been primarily based on the English 4-4-2 template, and his inflexible adherence to the system in its homeland would finally convey him extra criticism.
Different incidents that enlivened his tenure included the Beckham free-kick in opposition to Greece that ensured last-gasp qualification for the 2002 World Cup finals, Rooney’s damaged metatarsal in Lisbon a 12 months later, the gamers’ risk to strike over Rio Ferdinand’s eight-month ban in 2004 for lacking a doping take a look at, and the limitless debate over whether or not Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Paul Scholes could possibly be fitted right into a coherent midfield.
In his five-year tenure, Eriksson by no means managed England at Wembley. The previous stadium was demolished after Keegan’s resignation, forcing the FA to rearrange house video games at venues across the nation whereas it was rebuilt. A 12 months after Eriksson’s departure, England returned to the brand new Wembley underneath his former No 2, Steve McClaren, and stumbled to a defeat in opposition to Croatia that value them a spot within the Euro 2008 finals. McClaren, Fabio Capello (on £6m a 12 months), Hodgson and Sam Allardyce all didn’t match the Swede’s report earlier than Gareth Southgate led England to the ultimate of a significant championship in 2021, shedding on penalties.
Eriksson joined Manchester Metropolis a 12 months after resigning from the England job, profitable the supervisor of the month award that August earlier than being sacked on the finish of the season by the membership’s Thai proprietor, Thaksin Shinawatra. Thereafter got here transient spells managing Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen within the Chinese language Tremendous League, Leicester Metropolis within the Premier League, Al-Nasr in Dubai, and the nationwide groups of Mexico, Ivory Coast and, in 2019, the Philippines, his last job in soccer.
The strangest project of his profession got here in 2009, when he spent six months with Notts County within the fourth tier of English soccer earlier than discovering that the formidable guarantees made by a Center East consortium weren’t backed up by precise cash. Mentioned to have a contract value £2m a 12 months, Eriksson earned widespread admiration by quietly waiving his proper to a pay-off so as to save the world’s oldest league membership from additional monetary embarrassment.
At Meadow Lane he left behind, as he had elsewhere, the reminiscence of a courteous and charming man whose principal flaw was not his adventurous love life or a zeal to take heed to affords of latest contracts – traits that hardly set him other than the frequent run of humanity – however his failure, after early success, to dwell as much as his billing as a soccer genius.
In January this 12 months he introduced that he had acquired a prognosis of terminal most cancers. In March he realised an early ambition to handle Liverpool when he was invited to guide a group of the membership’s former stars in a 4-2 win over an Ajax group at Anfield. “Completely lovely,” he mentioned of the expertise, at which he acquired a standing ovation.
He’s survived by his companion, Yaniseth Bravo Mendoza, and her son, Alcides; by the son, Johan, and daughter, Lina, from his marriage to Ann-Christine, which led to divorce in 1994; a granddaughter, Sky; and his father, Sven, and brother, Lars-Erik.
