Sven-Goran Eriksson
A major in-depth biography of Sven-Goran Eriksson – the first foreign manager of the England football team – which chronicles his time in the hot seat, from taking over from Kevin Keegan, the story of the 2002 World Cup Finals in Japan and South Korea, through to the 2004 European Championships.Reserved – some would say introvert – by nature, he has so far dismissed as intrusive almost all questions about anything other than the England team.There is a fascinating story to be told about the moderate full-back who failed in his own country, retired from playing at 27, then went on to become one of the best coaches in the world.The son of a truck driver from a small provincial town in Sweden, Eriksson left school early and worked in a social security office. He went to college to study PE and played football as an amateur before being persuaded by an older teammate Tord Grip (now his assistant with England) that his career lay elsewhere in management.Modest success at Roma and Fiorentina was followed by a renewal of Sampdoria's fortunes. It wasn't long before Lazio came knocking – but not before an acrimonious fallout with Blackburn when his surprise about-turn left the Lancashire club without a new manager. He enjoyed phenomenal success in Rome, however, where he led Lazio to the scudetto, and this eventually paved the way to the England manager's job.Since then Eriksson has come under the microscope from the English press, as much for his private affairs as for his team's stuttering performances. Despite his achievements in leading England to the quarter-finals of the World Cup in 2002, his methods, formations and team selections are the subject of fierce debate up and down the country.Joe Lovejoy's book captures the essence of the man and goes some way to explaining his influence behind England. This paperback edition explores his thoughts about his captain playing his football in Spain and documents England's rocky road to the 2004 European Championship finals.
Читать Sven-Goran Eriksson онлайн беплатно
SVEN
THE FINAL RECKONING
Joe Lovejoy
‘My advice to Sven is to quit his job, too. Those bastards at the FA want to destroy him. The knives are out.’
FARIA ALAM, after resigning as personal assistant
to the Football Association’s executive director, David Davies, August 2004
It was all a far cry from the heady days of November 2000, when Sven-Goran Eriksson was warmly greeted as England’s saviour on taking up the management at a time when Kevin Keegan’s abrupt departure had left the national team rock bottom, not just in their World Cup qualifying group, but mentally as well. Now, nearly four years on, the FA wanted him out, and were happy for it to be known that the best paid coach in the world was on borrowed time. If his employers were dissatisfied with Eriksson, the feeling was certainly mutual. He had been ‘hung out to dry’, as he put it, over the ‘Fariagate’ sex scandal that had threatened to bring down the hierarchy of English football’s governing body, and briefly considered sueing for constructive dismissal before opting to soldier on until the next attractive job offer came along.
How had it come to this? It is a story that makes ‘Footballers’ Wives’ look tame, a tale of unbridled lust, greed, intrigue and xenophobia, laced with a lot of football – some good, some bad. When all is said and done, the final verdict has to be that England’s first foreign coach proved to be an expensive disappointment. He deserves credit for reviving the dispirited and disorganized team he inherited from Keegan, but having raised morale, performance and public expectation, he achieved no more than quarter-final places at the 2002 World Cup and 2004 European Championship when, with a more adventurous approach, England might have done much better.
In football terms, history will judge Eriksson to have been too defensively orientated, too inflexible in his team selection and tactics, and too indulgent of his players. In the big matches, England paid the ultimate price for timidly circling the wagons and defending slender leads instead of trying to improve them; they had no Plan B when bog standard 4–4–2 went awry; and, even for those patently out of form, it seemed harder to get out of the team than it was to get in it in the first place. This was most glaringly apparent in the case of David Beckham who, on his own admission, was not as fit as he should have been at Euro 2004, yet was invariably allowed to play the full 90 minutes, or even extra-time, when he should have been substituted.
One of England’s most experienced defenders propounds an interesting theory here. Remarking on a quote from Nancy Dell’Olio, Eriksson’s former partner, who told a TV chat show that he disliked one-on-one conflict, the player suggested this was evident both in the coach’s personal and professional lives. The coach had remained with Ms Dell’Olio for at least a year after the relationship had run its course because breaking up would have been too confrontational, and he was reluctant to substitute senior players for the same reason.
Be that as it may, Eriksson often seemed to be in his captain’s thrall – so much so that when the squad went to Sardinia in May 2004, for pre-tournament preparations, the coach and Nancy moved out of the best suite at the Forte Village, which they had been routinely allocated by the hotel management, to allow Beckham and his wife, Victoria, to move in. This sent out all the wrong signals, fuelling resentment within the squad of the special treatment, and unprecedented influence Beckham enjoyed.
Eriksson has always asked to be judged on results alone, in which case he was clearly overpaid on £4 million a year compared to the £1.1 million earned by Luis Felipe Scolari, who won the 2002 World Cup with Brazil and took Portugal to the final of Euro 2004. Given that disparity, it is unrealistic for the England coach to expect the media to focus entirely on football matters and ignore his private life. The intrusion Eriksson often complains about comes with the pay packet. As the Sunday Times put it, if he wants to be free to romance whoever and behave however he chooses, without it getting into the papers, let him go and manage Austria or Switzerland for £250,000 a year.
