In praise of Sven-Goran Eriksson

Former England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson has revealed that he has cancer and, ‘at best’, about a year to live. The sad news of his terminal illness prompted an understandable outpouring of support across football.

The official England team account posted on X/ Twitter: ‘Sending our love, Sven’. Meanwhile, ex-England captain Wayne Rooney paid tribute to Eriksson as ‘a brilliant coach and a special person. Loved and respected by everyone. We’re all with you Sven, keep fighting.’

It was under Eriksson that Rooney made his England debut in 2003, before bursting on to the international scene proper at the 2004 Euros. At the time, Rooney was just the latest addition to the so-called ‘Golden generation’ of English players, consisting of the likes of David Beckham, Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard, who were poised to return the national team to past glories. All they needed was a footballing Svengali to guide them to the promised land – and Sven was deemed the man.

Looking back now, it is painfully obvious that way too much was expected of him. After all, wasn’t managing England deemed the most impossible job in football? Sven took over the national team in 2001 from Kevin Keegan, who resigned unexpectedly after losing to Germany. So much weight was placed on the shoulders of the quietly spoken and urbane Swede, who spoke English with a cultured accent and had actually won things.

How daft it all seems now. Why did anyone think it would end in anything other than the usual failure?

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What did the suits at the Football Association see in him? He had not been an elite-level player, but then few great managers are. He had won the Uefa Cup as a manager with IFK Goteborg in 1981, as well as a Serie A title with Lazio in 2000. There had been other trophies along the way. 

Any initial doubts about whether he could cut it in the England job were dispelled by a stunning 5-1 victory over Germany in Munich, during qualifiers for the World Cup: Michael Owen scored a hat-trick. England went on to successfully qualify for the 2002 World Cup, only to lose 2-1 to Brazil in the quarter finals, beaten by Ronaldinho’s spectacular long-range free kick.

Losing at the quarter final stage was to become the recurring theme of Eriksson’s five-and-a-half years in charge of the team, with defeats in penalty shootouts to Portugal in Euro 2004 and in the 2006 World Cup. He never made any progress, not really. Eriksson left the job in 2006, despite having two years remaining on his contract. No official reason was given but it was widely thought that he had been caught up in one too many tabloid stories, with his time as manager dominated by a series of revelations about his private life.

It is now largely forgotten how controversial it was back in 2001 to give the England job to a foreign coach. Only Englishmen were deemed to have the right to pick and manage the England team. The crushing sense of disappointment that followed Eriksson’s failure to transform England’s fortunes was palpable. Three quarter final exits in succession for a team full of such outstanding talent could not be disguised as anything other than underwhelming.

His tenure in charge of the national team was given some underserved respectability by the serial underachievements of those who followed him, including Steve McClaren, Fabio Capello and Roy Hodgson. It is only under Gareth Southgate that England have started to reach the latter stages of the big tournaments on a regular basis, although actually winning something is still proving a step too far.

Eriksson is a reminder of an earlier era marked by a collective delusion that all it would take for England to be champions once more was some tactical tinkering from a foreign coach who spoke well and had won things. No one in English football is quite that naive or stupid any more. We have Sven to thank for that at least.