Sven-Göran Eriksson, first foreigner to manage the England football team

He had dazzled in European club football but his England tenure could be summed up as: ‘First half, good. Second half, not so good’

Sven-Göran Eriksson, who has died aged 76, was from 2001 until 2006 the first foreigner to manage the England football team; the side reached the quarter-final of three major tournaments, and hardly lost a match otherwise, yet more might have been achieved had players and manager alike been able to transcend their limitations.
Eriksson was appointed following the abrupt resignation of Kevin Keegan in the lavatories at Wembley after a defeat by Germany. Arsène Wenger was perhaps the FA’s favoured candidate, but influenced not least by Arsenal director David Dein, they approached instead the Swede.
Unknown in England, Eriksson had won a remarkable 18 trophies in 20 years in club football in Italy, Portugal and Sweden, and had just taken Lazio to the Serie A title. Television money was starting to wash over the game and, anxious to project an image of modernity from new offices in Soho, the FA hoped the ice-cool Swede would, for a £3 million salary, bring continental subtlety to a national game seen increasingly as out of touch.
Eriksson demonstrated at once that he was unafraid to see things from a different perspective by selecting Chris Powell, the unheralded Charlton defender, for his first match. Powell did not appear again, arguably an indication that Eriksson and his assistant Tord Grip knew little about footballers in England.
But they were blessed with having at their disposal the so-called “Golden Generation”, which included Michael Owen, David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Paul Scholes and later Wayne Rooney. When the team hammered Germany 5-1 in Munich in 2001 all seemed set fair. Indeed, Eriksson, at heart a cautious tactician, would only lose one match in qualification in 5 and a half years.
Yet thereafter he was hampered on the pitch by what was becoming customary ill-fortune, and off it by fiascos that were largely avoidable. “Things just happened,” he wrote later. But if that was true, it was nonetheless not the hallmark of a successful international manager.
At the 2002 World Cup, overshadowed by the saga of Beckham’s broken metatarsal, the team coped with the loss of Gerrard and Gary Neville to injury and only lost the quarter-final to Brazil when Ronaldinho’s long-range effort unexpectedly beat David Seaman. In the subsequent European Championships, Rooney announced himself in spectacular fashion before getting injured, and the side went out on penalties against Portugal.
The tabloids, meanwhile, had been delighted to discover that the seemingly passionless Eriksson was a ladies’ man. Besides his companion of the time, the Italian firecracker Nancy Dell’Olio, he had affairs with the presenter Ulrika Jonsson and with FA secretary Faria Alam, which led to the resignation of its chief executive Mark Palios, who was also enjoying her favours. “It happened that I met other women, too,” admitted Eriksson in his memoir Sven (2013). Much later, he learned that his phone had been hacked by the News of the World.
Eriksson was also repeatedly to be found angling for prestigious jobs in club football. In 2002, he agreed to take over from Sir Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford, only for Ferguson to change his mind about retirement. Two years later, he had to back out of plans to manage Chelsea when the deal was uncovered, and in 2006 the so-called “fake sheikh” trapped him into showing an interest in moving to Aston Villa.
This prompted the FA to announce ahead of the World Cup that his contract would not be renewed. At the tournament in Germany – dominated off the field by the showy presence of the players’ wives and girlfriends (Wags) – England again went out on penalties against Portugal, after Rooney was sent off.
Eriksson admitted he had made a mistake in not preparing more for sudden-death spot kicks. Though some players responded to his calm, detached style, and the complete trust he placed in them as professionals, others probably needed a different kind of leadership. Gareth Southgate lamented that when Winston Churchill was wanted in the dressing room, all they got was Iain Duncan Smith – the Tory Party’s “quiet man”.
Observers summed up Eriksson’s tenure by borrowing his own verdict on one match: “First half, good. Second half, not so good.” Though international managers have little time to coach players intensively, the Swede was certainly culpable of not having renewed the team more during his time, apparently content to have a side he had taken to the fourth spot in Fifa’s rankings play to their supposed strengths.
Then, too, the players failed (as so often) to merit the faith put in them. Eriksson appeared surprised by this, as he did by much that happened to him. He left England with few observers understanding him much better than when he arrived; and perhaps vice-versa.
Sven-Göran Eriksson was born on February 5 1948 at Sunne, in central western Sweden. He grew up nearby in Torsby, farming country close to the border with Norway. His father, also Sven, was just 18 when he was born and his mother, Ulla, 21. They had not told their own parents about the pregnancy and for the first two years of his life, until the couple married, Sven-Göran was raised largely alone by his mother.
Her family were distinctly less well-off than his paternal grandparents, who were of prosperous farming stock, and it was some time before they accepted her. She later worked in a textile shop and a kiosk, while Sven-Göran’s father became a bus driver in the family business. Money was always short.
Sven-Göran left school soon after he had started playing for the local football team at 16. Post military service, he found a job with the state insurance agency, but tiring of this returned to finish his schooling at 21. He then studied economics and later sports science while turning out as a solid, right-footed defender for teams in Sweden’s lower leagues. In the early 1970s, while with Karlskoga in the second division, he became a PT teacher.
There he was managed by Tord Grip. Eriksson began to think about coaching after being given a torrid time by a winger and wondering how best to counter him. When Grip took charge of part-timers Degerfors, in the third division, he asked Eriksson to be his assistant.
There the duo brought in the 4-4-2 formation, heavy pressing and zonal marking which had recently been introduced to Swedish football, with great success, by Bob Houghton and Roy Hodgson, another future English manager. When Grip was offered a post with the national side, Eriksson took over at Degerfors, though continuing with teaching as well. One innovation was use of a sports psychologist, and Degerfors won promotion to the second tier.
Even so, it was a shock when Gothenburg, one of the biggest sides in the country, offered him the manager’s job. Eriksson was just 30 and unknown but had been recommended to the club as a moderniser by the supervisor of his master’s thesis.
The team were renowned for their sparkling attacking football and at first resisted Eriksson’s more pragmatic template, which required them to repeat drills many times. The results soon convinced them, as they won the Swedish cup in 1979, and both the Allsvenskan league and cup in 1982.
That year, in Eriksson’s greatest achievement, they also triumphed in the Uefa Cup, beating favourites Hamburg convincingly over two legs. It bears recalling that Gothenburg were only a semi-professional team and at the time of the final had just begun their season.
The performance gained him the post at Benfica, and although the following year Eriksson endured disappointment when losing to Anderlecht in the final of the Uefa Cup, he did win the league twice in three years in Portugal.
From there he moved on to Roma, recently beaten by Liverpool in the European Cup final. Three largely frustrating seasons ensued with a tiring team (Carlo Ancelotti apart), although they did win the Coppa Italia in 1986. Next was Fiorentina, where Eriksson was able to watch Roberto Baggio bloom, although the Swede’s time there was blighted by his infant daughter needing a life-saving heart operation.
A deal to bring him to AC Milan did not materialise and in 1989 he returned to Benfica. The following year, the side reached the final of the European Cup against AC Milan, only to lose to Frank Rijkaard’s lone goal for the rossoneri. Benfica won their domestic title in 1991 but Eriksson again felt the pull of Europe’s strongest league and joined Sampdoria.
Although the Genoese had become a selling club after expensive recent triumphs, Eriksson reflected later that his five years there were perhaps his happiest in football. He worked with players such as Gianluca Vialli, Juan-Sebastian Veron, Ruud Gullit, David Platt and Roberto Mancini, who rivalled Beckham as his most loyal disciple. A notable achievement was converting Sinisa Mihajlovic into a roaming midfielder with a devastating free-kick.
Eriksson was particularly close to the club’s owner, Paolo Mantovani, who died during his tenure. Eriksson’s marriage also came to an end after his wife became tired of uprooting herself and the family. On the pitch, he claimed another Coppa Italia in 1994 though lost a Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final to Arsenal.
In 1997, destiny beckoned in the form of the food magnate Sergio Cragnotti, who was determined to bring glory to Lazio. Eriksson had agreed to manage Blackburn but backed out (Hodgson was appointed instead). With the talent at his disposal including Alessandro Nesta, Pavel Nedved, Diego Simeone, Alen Boksic, Mihajlovic and Mancini (playing now as a midfielder not striker), Eriksson finally shed his tag in Italy of being a “successful loser”.
Over three seasons, the Romans won the Coppa Italia and the Cup Winners’ Cup and lost an Uefa Cup final to Inter and a rampant Ronaldo. Finally, in their centenary year of 2000, and having failed to win the title the year before by a point, they claimed the scudetto ahead of Juventus.
It was their first since 1974, and by capturing the Italian cup that year as well the team made Eriksson the first manager to win the Double in three different countries. Whatever his critics in England believed, undoubtedly at club level he was a manager who consistently got results.
The erratic path of Eriksson’s career after parting company with England might suggest that the job had not enhanced his reputation. It might be nearer the truth to say that the lack of judgement he had demonstrated therein now played a larger part in events than when he had been so much in demand a decade earlier.
He returned to football, after a year, at Manchester City, newly acquired by the former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Eriksson claimed later that he knew nothing of the owner’s past, including that he had been deposed in a coup. Bankrolled by big spending, things at first went well as City topped the league for a while and, despite falling away late on, did the double over United for the first time in a generation.
Shinawatra wanted more, however, and Eriksson moved on to take charge of Mexico’s team. After this adventure, bizarrely, he accepted in 2009 the challenge of rebuilding the might that had been Notts County, then in the league’s bottom flight.
When the promises he had been made by the supposed owners’ representative, which turned on a mineral rights deal with North Korea, turned out to be pie in the sky, he turned to leading Ivory Coast at the 2010 World Cup. There followed short stints at Leicester, then in the Championship, and in Thailand and Dubai.
These gyrations were prompted largely by Eriksson’s growing realisation that much of the wealth that he had accumulated in his career had vanished. He claimed to have been defrauded of some £10 million by his financial adviser, Samir Khan, whom he sued.
Much of the money had gone on speculative property deals. Khan, who denied the allegations, was subsequently declared bankrupt and Eriksson never recovered the money, though Khan apologised to him in court.
To placate the taxman, Eriksson was forced to put up for sale several of his houses, including his country estate in Sweden. Financial redemption came in the form of the booming Chinese Super League.
After a year at Guangzhou, Eriksson took over at Shanghai SIPG in 2014 on a reputed salary of £2 million. He steered the club to second place the next year before being replaced by André Villas-Boas. He had half a season at Shenzhen, then managed the Philippines from 2018-19.
His final job in football was as sporting director at Karlstad BK, a club in the west of Sweden. In January 2024, however, Eriksson left his post, announcing that he had terminal pancreatic cancer and expected to live no more than a year.
He married, in 1977 (dissolved 1994), Ann-Christina Petersson, known as Anki, who was then training as a teacher. They had a son, Johan, and a daughter, Lina.
Sven-Göran Eriksson, born February 5 1948, died August 26 2024