Courtly Swede who managed England's 'golden generation'
Sven-Göran Eriksson was "the mild-mannered Swede with a surprisingly colourful private life" who became the first foreign manager of the England men's football team, said The Scotsman. Recruited in 2001, he presided over the "golden generation" of players that included David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Michael Owen and, later, Wayne Rooney; and he led them to the quarter-finals of three major tournaments, while losing just one match in qualifying rounds. Yet his five-and-a-half-year tenure came to be regarded as a disappointment, said The Guardian. There was a sense that he'd failed to deliver on England's promise. Indeed, when the squad arrived in Germany for the 2006 World Cup, it was as the "support act for the WAG phenomenon".
By then the tabloids had, to their delight, discovered that the "seemingly passionless Eriksson was a ladies' man", said The Telegraph. Although he was in a long-term relationship with an American-Italian lawyer named Nancy Dell'Olio, he was found to have had affairs with TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson and Faria Alam, a secretary at the Football Association (FA). Meanwhile, he was repeatedly caught angling for top jobs in club football. In 2006, he was lured by the tabloid reporter known as the Fake Sheikh into expressing interest in a bogus offer from Aston Villa. This was the catalyst for the FA announcing that his £4.5 million a year contract would not be renewed after that year's World Cup, which England departed from having lost on penalties to Portugal at the quarter-final stage.
Sven-Göran Eriksson was born in 1948, and brought up in the town of Torsby, where his father worked as a truck driver and his mother in a shop. He played football at school, and joined his local team at 16. Having spent several years in Sweden's lower leagues (while working as a PE teacher), he was playing for second division Karlskoga when he was advised by manager Tord Grip that he would never be a great footballer – but could become a great manager. Aged 28, he duly moved into management, first as Grip's assistant at Degerfors, who were in division three.
When, in 1979, he was appointed to manage Göteburg, he was so little known that some of the team's players had never heard of him. Yet three years later, Göteburg became the first Nordic team to lift the Uefa Cup, said The Times, and Eriksson was invited to take over Portuguese "giants" Benfica. He led them to league victory twice before moving to Italy, to begin a trophy-laden career in which he managed teams including Roma, Sampdoria and Lazio. He was at Lazio when he got the call from the FA.
The hope was that Eriksson would bring a cool Scandinavian head to the team. Pundits, however, were outraged, said The Times. Terry Venables claimed that it would be hard to support a side that was not run by an Englishman. Soon, the sceptics were silenced by a string of victories, including England's stunning 5-1 win against Germany in Munich in 2001. But the optimism did not last, said Paul Hayward in The Guardian. Part of the problem was that though the FA had hoped he'd bring fresh European ideas to the team, his own "earliest education had been in the English way: direct play, 4-4-2, trying to win tournaments in summer heat without the ball". And he soon slipped into "native customs". Ultimately, words he'd used about one of his games were ascribed to his England tenure: "First half good, second half not so good."
He was subsequently appointed to manage Manchester City, but was fired during his first season following a string of defeats. He moved then to crisis-hit Notts County, and when he left, he was praised for waiving his right to a payoff, so as not to compound the club's financial troubles. In January this year, he revealed that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and that he had "at best" a year to live. There followed an outpouring of affection and warmth for Eriksson, a man known for his kindness, modesty and dignity, from across the footballing world.
