Sven-Goran Eriksson

‘In one sense, he was very unlucky against Portugal. Had Sol Campbell’s legitimate goal stood, we would have been in the semi-finals. Having said that, Portugal were the better side on the night, and if Sven has learned anything, it is probably to be a bit more positive, particularly with substitutions. The decision to send on Phil Neville in central midfield was a negative move, and handed the initiative to Portugal. He is essentially a full-back, and doesn’t have the energy to get up and down in international football.

‘The tournament proved that it is becoming harder to sit back and defend a 1–0 lead. It is not just England who were caught out, Italy defended very deep against Sweden and conceded an equalizer late on, as did Germany against Holland. The game has changed in the last ten years, and every country seems to have a supply of quick, talented attacking players. These days, the best way to keep a lead is to try to score the second goal, rather than lock the back door as we tried to do against France and Portugal.

‘I was so disappointed when we came back from Euro ’88 having lost all three matches, but two years later we reached the World Cup semi-finals, with a lot of the same players hitting top form whereas in ’88 they couldn’t get going. The message is that to rip up and start again now would be self-defeating. The best solution is to give Sven and his men another chance to show that, with a little more devil may care and confidence in their own technical ability, England can compete with the best.’

The players’ view was articulated by Gary Neville, England’s longest-serving international, who had a good tournament, on and off the field. Whenever the team needed real leadership, such as after the defeat by France, it was usually Neville who provided it, with the uplifting dressing-room oratory that was so conspicuously lacking in others. ‘Gutted’ by the outcome in Portugal, the Manchester United defender said: ‘We were totally sincere when we told everybody we could win it, and I do believe that we were only just the wrong side of a thin dividing line. But at the end of the day, we weren’t quite good enough. Just for once, it would be nice to get those close calls that can decide a big game, like the goal Sol had disallowed, but the fact is that we didn’t have that extra edge to get us through.

‘There will be a big debate now about whether we are good enough, whether we were fooling ourselves when we said we could win the competition. Portugal did keep the ball well, and put us under amazing pressure, but I don’t think we should beat ourselves up about our passing after every tournament. I watched Portugal dominate Spain in just the same way.

‘This team has passed the ball as decisively and confidently as any of the England teams I have been involved in. We always seem to have to find a scapegoat when we go out of any tournament, but nobody deserves to be nailed. We just need to keep taking more of the strides forward that we have already made under Sven, who is the best England manager I have known.’

CHAPTER TWO SVEN’S VERDICT

Sven-Goran Eriksson rejected criticisms of his ‘negativity’, but as significant as Rio Ferdinand’s suspension from Euro 2004, or the injury sustained by Wayne Rooney in the quarter-finals, was the absence of Eriksson’s assistant, Brian Kidd, who was recovering from prostate cancer. Kidd was a positive influence, an attack-minded coach, whose reaction to adversity was to throw another man forward. Terry Venables said of their time together at Leeds: ‘Whenever we were in trouble in a game, Brian would always say: “Let’s go 4–3–3.”’ When Kidd was not fit enough to travel to Portugal, he was replaced by Steve McClaren, who is much more defence-orientated. His inclination was to concentrate on organizing the back four, where he had mixed success. Three of England’s defenders – Gary Neville, Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell – shone throughout, but as a unit the defence operated much too deep, and proved alarmingly fallible at set pieces. That Kidd was missed is beyond question.

Eriksson felt England had been unlucky, and said the difference between success and failure was infinitesimal. A debriefing went as follows:

Question: What more do England need to win a major tournament?

Eriksson: Very little really. A little bit of luck would be nice. I still think we can win the next World Cup.

Q: Will you be around to try in 2006?

Eriksson: If it is the wish of the English people, or the FA, I will leave, but I don’t think that is the case. When I called the players together for a meeting the day after we lost to Portugal, I talked about 2006, and said I was committed to taking them to Germany.

Q: Were mistakes made in selection?

Eriksson: Absolutely not. The 11 players I picked were the best available, and the team will not change much before 2006.

Q: Are new players needed to take the team forward?

Eriksson: No, definitely not. This generation is still young, and can play at the 2006 World Cup for sure, and most of them in 2008. How old is David Beckham? Twenty-nine. At 31 he should be even better. Steven Gerrard is still only 24. It’s too early to talk about a new generation. Some new players will come in, but not many. Jermain Defoe will get a chance. He’s quick and a goalscorer. And we’ll have a look at Chris Kirkland in goal – if he stays fit for once.

Q: Before the tournament, England’s midfield was regarded as a strong suit. What went wrong?

Eriksson: I don’t agree that it did go wrong. All of them could have played a bit better, but their discipline was good, and they will be in the squad – the team probably – for years to come. In the quarter-final their legs went because we were chasing the ball so much. Steven Gerrard had cramp, and couldn’t do the running any more, so we had to put another player on.

Q: Beckham had looked more tired than Gerrard. Was his condition a disappointment?

Eriksson: When we went to Sardinia to prepare, we found that four or five players needed to work on their fitness. He was one of them. He worked hard at it, but maybe it was a bit too late. We have seen Beckham better, there’s no doubt about that.

Q: Why did you not bring him off?

Eriksson: If I could have changed one more player in the quarter-final it would have been Beckham, but they were all tired, and I’d made my three substitutions. Remember, Portugal had two more days to recover between games, and at some stage we were always going to pay for that.

Q: Why did England sit back and invite pressure?

Eriksson: Why didn’t we attack? It was the same as the Brazil game in Shizuoka. I wanted us to attack, but to do it you have to have the ball. If you don’t have it, you have to defend, it’s as simple as that. I like to defend high up the pitch, not on our 18–yard line, but if you come up against a team who are gambling a bit, you have to defend deeper. Also, if you are tired, as we were, you make more mistakes and keep the ball less, and it becomes very difficult. Playing defensively was not a tactic, not something we set out to do.

Q: So it was not all down to bad luck, England needed to retain possession more?

Eriksson: We work on that every time we have a practice session. We concentrate on ball retention in the warm-up, and also as part of the main session. I think we are improving at it, but Portugal, technically, are the best team in Europe, just like two years ago, when Brazil were technically the best team in the world when we played them. When I use the word technically, I mean they are best at keeping the ball.

Q: Why was there such a gap between the midfield and the strikers?

Eriksson: There’s a dilemma there. You want to play the ball forward as early as possible, but to keep the team together as a unit you need to play three, four or five passes and then get it forward. That gives time for the defenders and midfield to move up. If you just kick the ball long, then the strikers make their runs and the rest of the team is not there with them, and when they lose possession, there is that gap there. That happened too often, and it’s something we’ll have to work on.

Q: You seemed to be more emotionally affected than you had been at the World Cup.

Eriksson: When we went to the World Cup, we weren’t sure that we could win it, but during the tournament we started to believe that it was possible. At Euro 2004 I was always convinced that we were one of the teams capable of winning it. We didn’t and I’m sorry. I’ve lost many football games in my career, but to go out like that, on penalties, was awful. The difference between winning and losing was like this (he held up a thumb and forefinger, half an inch apart). We are so nearly there.

Q: What are the positives to be taken from the tournament?

Eriksson: Sol Campbell was a rock. Incredible. He could have been the match winner against Portugal – should have been. Ashley Cole also had an extremely good tournament. And then there was Wayne Rooney. We knew about him in England beforehand, but he proved to be even better than we thought, and he is a big name now, not just in Europe, but around the world. I think he will be a star of the World Cup in 2006, the European Championship in 2008, and way beyond that. If you are that good at 18, then by the time you’re 22 or 24 you could be phenomenal. Wayne is already one of our jewels, and he will get better and better. It is not just about his goals, it’s about how he plays football and the thought behind it. He’s always a thought process ahead in the positions he takes up, and the way he links up our game is just fantastic from one so young. With him in the side, it’s so much easier for us to play out with the ball. You can target him and he’ll keep it or get fouled, in which case he has got us a free-kick. I’d expected him to play well, but not at that level.

Q: What would be your abiding memory of Euro 2004?

Eriksson: The last three minutes against France I guess (when England went from winning 1–0 to losing 2–1). That or the last penalty against Portugal. No, definitely the last three minutes against France. That was awful – complete madness.

True enough – it was ‘madness’ reminiscent of the circumstances in which he got the job in the first place …

CHAPTER THREE THE VACANCY

In hindsight it is clear that Kevin Keegan should have gone straight after Euro 2000, when the ‘Three Lions’ returned from the Low Countries with their tails lodged firmly between their legs. Tactical naïvety has become a clichéd criticism, trotted out ad nauseam on every radio phone-in, but Keegan was its personification. Against Portugal in Eindhoven, with England leading 2–0, he opted not to shut up shop and man-mark Luis Figo, arguably the best player in the world, with the result that England let slip what should have been a winning position and lost 3–2. Their hopes were resurrected with a 1–0 victory over the worst German team in living memory, but then a deserved 3–2 defeat against Romania, in Charleroi, where some of his choices were exposed as inadequate at international level, brought Keegan and company home before the competition proper had started.

After Glenn Hoddle had psycho-babbled himself out of the job, Keegan was portrayed as ‘the people’s choice’ by the Football Association. He wasn’t. That the label stuck was something of a triumph for the spin doctors at the FA, for in the opinion polls it was not Keegan but Terry Venables who had emerged as the clear favourite, both with the fans and with the professionals in the game. In the aftermath of Euro 2000, it was apparent that ‘King Kevin’ had feet of clay. The players liked him, but despaired at his lack of tactical nous, the public could see through his crass, British bulldog tub-thumping, and his employers were beginning to have their doubts.

The change should, and probably would, have been made before the start of the World Cup qualifying campaign, but for the absence of a suitable candidate who was available and, crucially, on whom the FA mandarins could agree. Venables, who had proved his worth in taking England to the semi-finals of Euro 96, would have had a second crack at the job but for the intransigence of Noel White, the influential chairman of the FA’s international committee. So Keegan was allowed to continue – a decision the FA was to rue.

By one of the quirks of fate that abound in football, the first game in World Cup qualifying saw England at home to Germany, the old enemy providing the opposition for the last international to be played under Wembley’s twin towers. The game would be followed by a second qualifier, away to Finland, four days later. Traditionally, the Germans were something of a bête noire, but there were no Beckenbauers, Netzers or Mullers in their millennium class, and England, who had just beaten them 1–0 in Euro 2000, should have had nothing to fear.

But that was reckoning without Keegan’s selectorial waywardness. For some unfathomable reason, he played Gareth Southgate, a central defender, in midfield, where this most willing and diligent of professionals was a four-square peg in a circular hole. England were depressingly poor, but Germany were not much better, and the only goal of a low-quality game was more the product of defensive deficiency than Teutonic inspiration. There should have been no more than token danger when Liverpool’s Dietmar Hamann stepped up to take a free-kick fully 30 yards out, but England neglected to form the customary defensive wall, with the result that Hamann was able to beat David Seaman’s slow-mo dive, low to his right.

England were booed off the pitch and Keegan was verbally abused by his erstwhile admirers as he made the long, disconsolate trudge around the perimeter, during which the extent of his inadequacy finally hit home. By the time he reached the sanctuary of the dressing room, he had made a fateful decision. It was time to quit. Disarmingly honest, he told the players and his employers, and then the nation, via television, that he was not good enough for the job. Somebody else should have a go.

In the dressing room, there was emotion and confusion in equal measure. Some of the senior players, such as Tony Adams and Graeme Le Saux, urged the manager to ‘sleep on it’ before finally making up his mind, but he was adamant. Adam Crozier, the FA’s Chief Executive at the time, and did most to try to persuade Keegan to reconsider. Recalling one of his worst days in the job, he told me: ‘Losing to Germany was an incredibly disappointing way to start the World Cup qualifying series. It set us right back on our heels. To lose your first game at home to your main rivals would be a major setback for anybody, but it was the way we lost it. The way we played that afternoon, we seemed to have gone backwards again.

‘From my conversations with him, I know Kevin could see that there were good young players coming through, who were going to improve the team over the next couple of years, and he wasn’t sure that he was the right man to get the best out of them. Kevin is a great patriot, and he had always had a great rapport with the fans. Not everybody will agree with this, but I felt it was a very brave thing for him to say: “I don’t think I’m up to the job.” The thing I didn’t agree with him over, and I told him so, was his timing. My view was that if that was the way he felt, the time to go was after the game against Finland, four days later. Quitting after Germany left us completely rudderless for the trip to Helsinki. Another false start in the second game, which was what we had, was always going to make the task of qualifying even more difficult for whoever took over permanently. So I felt Kevin should have stayed on for that one, and I certainly tried very hard to persuade him, as did a number of the players and Noel White, Chairman of the International Committee.

‘In the dressing room straight after the game we all tried – Tony Adams particularly – to get him to reconsider. Don’t forget, he was very popular with the players, and even after that game there was still a lot of love for Kevin and a great deal of support. They wanted him to stay, but there was no persuading him. Anybody who knows Kevin will tell you that one of his characteristics is that once he has made up his mind about something, that’s it. He won’t budge.

‘Crucial to his decision, I think, was the reaction of the fans as he came away from the pitch. He had always had that fantastic relationship with them; now they were booing and insulting him. In the dressing room, his mindset was complete. He wasn’t emotional, not at all. People imagine that he was, but he wasn’t. He came to a very clear-headed decision, and I think he made it with the best of intentions. He felt it was the right thing for his country. Even for the game on the Wednesday, his point of view was that the team would do better under someone else. He said to me: “I don’t think I can lift them [the players] because I don’t feel up there myself.”’

For Crozier and White, the urgent task that chaotic Saturday night was to find a stand-in to take the squad to Helsinki, less than 48 hours later. Crozier explained: ‘It wasn’t just that we’d lost, or that it was the last game at Wembley, but the England coach had resigned, so there was a huge furore about what had happened and where we went from here. In terms of the Wednesday match, there was only one sensible solution, and that was to get our technical director, Howard Wilkinson, to do it. Given the timescale [the England squad flew out to Helsinki on the Monday morning], it had to be somebody from within, and Howard had the knowledge, both of our players and of international football. So on the Saturday night, by about 7.30pm, we’d agreed that he would be in charge for Finland. I spoke to Noel White about it, and checked with the FA chairman [Geoff Thompson] to make sure that he was comfortable with it. But in the final analysis, our options were so limited that it had to be Howard. To have put someone in from scratch would have been asking the impossible.’

One of the more fanciful tabloid newspapers reported that Crozier had left the dressing room and telephoned Eriksson’s agent, Athole Still, to enquire about his availability. (An interesting, cosmopolitan character, who trained as an opera singer in Italy and worked as a swimming coach, TV commentator and journalist, Still got to know Eriksson in the mid-1980s when they met during abortive negotiations to take Still’s first football client, John Barnes, from Watford to Roma, who were then coached by Eriksson. A friendship was forged over the next few years and, when Eriksson’s first agent, the Swede Borg Lanz, died in 1993, Still replaced him.) ‘That was rubbish,’ Crozier said, laughing. What did happen was that before England left for Finland, Crozier formed a sub-committee whose brief was to draw up a list of candidates. As is his wont, he wanted to be seen to be proactive. The new manager would be his man.

The assumption was always that Wilkinson was a non-runner. As a manager of the old school, at Leeds, he had been good enough to win the last First Division title before the advent of the Premier League, and in those days he had confided that his driving ambition was to manage England. He had done it once before in a caretaker’s capacity, after Hoddle’s abrupt departure, but a comprehensive 2–0 defeat by France at Wembley did nothing for his credentials, and England’s goalless bore with Finland on 11 October 2000 merely confirmed the impression that the game had moved on and passed him by. The occasion was more remarkable for what happened before, and afterwards, than for anything that happened in the 90 minutes. The final training session before the match was witnessed by a group of English football correspondents and by two members of the FA’s international committee, all of whom were distinctly unimpressed. The journalists noticed that England’s game plan seemed to revolve around hitting long balls, right to left, for Emile Heskey to knock down. The FA kingmakers noted that Wilkinson’s man-management methods left as much to be desired as his tactics. Watching him bark out orders via a microphone headset, one said to the other: ‘We’ve no chance of winning here, he’s lecturing international footballers like schoolboys.’ As if to reinforce the point, two of the senior professionals present, Stuart Pearce and Teddy Sheringham, exchanged horrified looks behind Wilkinson’s back.

The poverty of England’s performance in the Olympic stadium, and a table which showed them bottom, with one point and Germany top with six, moved one reporter to enquire whether it might be better to forget about qualifying for Japan and Korea, and use the remaining matches to bring on younger players with Euro 2004 and the 2006 World Cup in mind. Instead of the expected ‘each game is there to be won’ response, Wilkinson replied: ‘The possibility you’ve raised obviously has to be considered. In the interests of the long term, we could go into it [the rest of the qualifying series] picking a team that’s going to be there in four years’ time.’

But would the public stand for the jam tomorrow approach? ‘If it’s the right thing to do in the opinion of the professionals, they’ve got to. What’s the alternative? To keep doing what we’re doing at the moment, riding the rollercoaster? Quite frankly, I’m fed up with that. I don’t even enjoy the highs particularly, because every time we’re up there I think: “Here we go again, hold on to the bar because we’ll be going down any moment.” No, the real alternative is to go in with realistic expectations and to outline clearly to the players what is expected of them. We’ve got to make sure that their expectations are realistic, and that they don’t fall into the trap of trying to achieve what you lot [the media] set out in your agenda.’

Any slender chance Wilkinson might have had of getting the job on a permanent basis disappeared in this puff of pomposity. Abandon the World Cup, and a lucrative ride on the gravy train? This was heresy at the FA. Crozier says: ‘I’m not sure Howard wanted it, and the general feeling among the sub-committee was that he was never going to get it.’ There is conflicting testimony as to what happened next. Crozier would have it that he was immediately intent upon crossing the Channel, and the Rubicon, by appointing from abroad. Always the mover and shaker, he made all the running. ‘In the period between the games against Germany and Finland, I compiled what I thought was the right short list. Then I got the sub-committee together, and spoke to them about why I’d done what I had, and said: “These are the people who should be in the frame. For a job of such magnitude, I thought there were only five who could rise to the challenge.”’

Apart from Crozier, the head-hunting subcommittee comprised: Geoff Thompson (the FA chairman), Noel White (chairman of the international committee), David Richards (vice-chairman of the international committee and chairman of the Premier League), David Dein of Arsenal and Peter Ridsdale of Leeds United (both of whom represented the Premier League on the FA board) and Wilkinson (FA technical director). It was to these men, Crozier says, that he took his five potential candidates. He told me: ‘We talked a lot about the criteria for the job, and the most important one for me, right at the very top of the list, was a sustained record of success. At the time I said success internationally, which was misunderstood. I didn’t mean a record of success in international football, but success wherever the person had coached, across the world. Our man had to be successful, not just as a one-season wonder, but somebody who had really achieved, wherever he had been. We wanted it all – international credibility, tactical nous, man-management expertise and the ability to handle the media. We were looking for respect within the game and the right personality and cultural profile for international football, where the highs are incredibly high, the lows really low, and there’s a lot of time between games to fret over a bad result or get over-excited by a good one. We needed somebody who could cope with both extremes in a very levelheaded way. An emotional person over-reacts, and it becomes a rollercoaster existence. A calm personality is essential for international management.