{"id":121652,"date":"2024-08-26T11:53:16","date_gmt":"2024-08-26T11:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/26\/erikssons-england-era-became-a-celebrity-circus-but-he-wanted-to-enjoy-life-and-was-never-bitter\/"},"modified":"2024-08-26T11:53:16","modified_gmt":"2024-08-26T11:53:16","slug":"erikssons-england-era-became-a-celebrity-circus-but-he-wanted-to-enjoy-life-and-was-never-bitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/26\/erikssons-england-era-became-a-celebrity-circus-but-he-wanted-to-enjoy-life-and-was-never-bitter\/","title":{"rendered":"Eriksson’s England era became a celebrity circus – but he wanted to enjoy life and was never bitter"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Eriksson’s<\/div>


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Sven-G\u00f6ran Eriksson doubted so much whether England could ever have a foreign manager that an initial approach was considered a joke.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Intrigued eventually by the ground-breaking opportunity, rather than being deterred by the indignation, the Swede would launch the Three Lions into five of the most frenzied years in their history.<\/p>\n

Everything belied his suave demeanour – from allowing a celebrity culture to consume the team to being an unlikely headline-making lothario himself and, even, showing passion while delivering results for his adopted country.<\/p>\n

It was a blessing and burden to inherit a Golden Generation of talent of David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and co – captivating the country with dazzling one-off displays but unable to deliver when it mattered most under the weight of expectation and pressure.<\/p>\n

It is the failure to overcome the constant quarter-final barrier and lift a trophy that shaped Eriksson’s England legacy where football too often seemed secondary.<\/p>\n

Read more:
Former England manager dies<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

But the Eriksson era did provide a mirror to the nation at the start of the new millennium.<\/p>\n

How the public’s ravenous appetite to gaze into the private lives of the stars – and the legalities of intrusive tabloid reporting – was stretched to extremes, and only unearthed years later.<\/p>\n

How patriotism could seem parochial or xenophobic – just as the Premier League was the platform for England opening up to the world.<\/p>\n

For a coach arriving after league and cup wins with Lazio, it proved perplexing that his suitability focused on his nationality over coaching credentials.<\/p>\n

“We’ve sold our birthright down the fjord to a nation of seven million skiers and hammer throwers who spend half their lives in darkness.”<\/p>\n

The Daily Mail headline set the tone for his introductory news conference.<\/p>\n

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\n Image:<\/span>
\n Sven-Goran Eriksson in 2019. Pic: Reuters
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He did try to sing God Save The Queen, feeling emotional as he realised the national standing he quickly assumed from 2001.<\/p>\n

And doubters – some at least – were won over spectacularly on the turf of England’s greatest rival.<\/p>\n

A 5-1 humiliation of Germany in Munich was followed a month later by another iconic moment of Eriksson’s reign – Beckham’s free kick that sealed a spot at the 2002 World Cup.<\/p>\n

But the highs came in qualifying, falling short – always at the quarter-finals stage – in his three tournaments.<\/p>\n

Too often it seemed more about fame than football around this England generation.<\/p>\n

The high – or low – point of that came at his second and final World Cup in 2006.<\/p>\n

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\n \"Sven-Goran\n <\/div>
\n Image:<\/span>
\n Sven-Goran Eriksson at the 2006 World Cup with England. Pic: PA
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As if managing Beckham, Rooney, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard wasn’t challenging enough, this was the era of the WAGs.<\/p>\n

The celebrity circus around the Baden-Baden team base in Germany saw the players’ wives and girlfriends indulging in the media attention.<\/p>\n

The insatiable appetite for a trophy matched the front page fodder the team – and their manager – provided.<\/p>\n

Eriksson wanted to enjoy life but his privacy was exploited by the dark arts of tabloids.<\/p>\n

Intimate details of affairs that the papers had a role in playing matchmaker to.<\/p>\n

“I met Ulrika Jonsson on 8 December 2001, at some party hosted by the Daily Express, or maybe it was the Daily Star,” he recalled.<\/p>\n

“The FA wanted me to travel around to various newspapers to be courteous and meet the editors. I visited the News Of The World too.”<\/p>\n

It was the paper – closed in scandal by Rupert Murdoch in 2011 – he would blame for ending his England reign.<\/p>\n

The notorious ‘fake sheikh’ had been used to trap him in a fictitious approach by Aston Villa ahead of the 2006 World Cup.<\/p>\n

“I was extremely disappointed because I was sacked because of that,” Eriksson said. “I never accepted or understood that the News Of The World is so important\u2026 because I told the people at the FA – you believe in them or me.”<\/p>\n

Who he could believe and trust was called into question by what he only later discovered was phone hacking.<\/p>\n

Voicemail interceptions were linked to being behind the Daily Mirror’s revelation of his relationship with TV presenter Jonsson – another Swede who made it big in Britain.<\/p>\n

“I think the football media was rather good. Sometimes they tried to kill me,” he said. “The other part of the media, that was a little bit of a surprise for me, because I wasn’t used to that.”<\/p>\n

But he was never bitter – returning to English football to manage Manchester City just before the influx of Abu Dhabi wealth, dropping into the fourth division during a bizarre, brief spell as Notts County’s director of football and taking on a second-tier job at Leicester.<\/p>\n

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Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News<\/p>\n

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The breadth of managerial roles after England – at three Chinese clubs, and the Mexico, Ivory Coast and Philippines national teams – showed Eriksson was happiest in the dugout.<\/p>\n

“As a player I was not good at all,” he recalled. “I was not good enough to play first division in Sweden well, so the best decision I ever took in my professional career was when Tord Grip came to me and said, ‘It’s better you stop playing and be my assistant coach.’<\/p>\n

“And that was when I was 27. So I had much better luck as a coach than a player for sure.”<\/p>\n

The affection following Eriksson revealing his cancer diagnosis in January 2024 even allowed an emotional farewell to English football at Anfield by fulfilling a wish to manage Liverpool, as revealed on Sky News<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

And assessments of his England reign seem more dispassionate as the trophy drought has gone on.<\/p>\n

His immediate successor – Steve McClaren – didn’t qualify for Euro 2008 – and it took 12 years for an England men’s manager to win a knockout game.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

But in his dying days, Eriksson was still thinking back to the 2006 World Cup.<\/p>\n

“We should have done better,” he said. “So the criticism I and the team took after that tournament I think was fair.”<\/p>\n

But what he could still never accept was why some questioned his right to ever have the job.<\/p>\n

And while breaking new ground by becoming England’s first foreign manager, the nationality debate endures whenever an FA appointment is needed.<\/p>\n

“There were people who did not like I was not English,” he lamented in retirement.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Sven-G\u00f6ran Eriksson doubted so much whether England could ever have a foreign manager that an initial approach was considered a joke.\u00a0 Intrigued eventually by the ground-breaking opportunity, rather than being deterred by the indignation, the Swede would launch the Three Lions into five of the most frenzied years in their history. Everything belied his suave […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/e3.365dm.com\/24\/08\/768x432\/skynews-sven-goran-eriksson_6667332.jpg?20240826122533","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10686,32713,69472,1200,45862,9526,22688,76,3012],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121654,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121652\/revisions\/121654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}