Sven-Goran Eriksson

‘I started with a long list, then broke it down and said to the committee: “There is a maximum of five who could meet our criteria and do the job.” At first I had people on the list who seemed to be good candidates, but then we thought: “Hang on, have they genuinely got all this?” The truth was that not many had.’ While others scratched their heads and dithered, Crozier drove the process forward. ‘I said: “Right, this is the short list. Before we go any further, does anyone disagree? No? Right, leave it with me, I will go away and look at this lot and find out everything I need to know about them.”’

Ridsdale remembers the sequence of events rather differently. According to him, he proposed Bobby Robson, who became the sub-committee’s first choice, ahead of Eriksson. The former Leeds chairman told me: ‘After the Germany game, on the Monday, Adam asked me, and the others, if we would form the sub-committee. We flew out to Finland and all the members of the sub-committee were there, apart from David Dein, and we thought it was a good opportunity to have our first meeting. We got together in the team’s hotel, and Adam produced a flip chart with a clean sheet of paper – nobody’s name was on it. He divided the board into four sections: English managers, non-English managers working in England, foreign managers and I think the fourth category was up and coming. On the English side, we had Bobby Robson, Terry Venables, Roy Hodgson and Howard Wilkinson, with a question mark against him. Of those working in England but non-English, we had Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Gerard Houllier, the foreigners were Eriksson, Johann Cruyff, Marcello Lippi and Hector Cuper, and in the up-and-coming category were Martin O’Neill, David O’Leary, Peter Taylor and Bryan Robson. These names were solicited by Adam and written on the board by him. He said: “These are the categories, do we agree? Can anyone think of anybody else? No? Right.” So we went through the names, and everybody agreed that the ideal was an Englishman with another young Englishman backing him up. We had Bobby Robson and Peter Taylor as manager and heir apparent. There was a long debate about whether Terry [Venables] should be considered, and everybody agreed that if “New England” was to represent what the FA wanted it to stand for, we couldn’t discount Terry’s non-footballing reputation, whatever its rights and wrongs. The view was that, given what we were trying to achieve at the FA, we had to have a new beginning, and therefore Terry was not appropriate. That was unanimous. Whether it was fair to him or not, the baggage that came with him counted against him, and he was out of it.

‘Having debated all the rights and wrongs, we came out of it with two names: Bobby Robson and Sven. The agreement was that Adam would go away and seek permission from Newcastle to talk to Robson, to see if he was an option. We weren’t just talking about having him for one or two games, as was widely reported at the time, we wanted him on a permanent basis. There was, though, a suggestion that if Bobby would only agree to do it for the rest of the season, that would buy us time.’

Ridsdale, now Chairman at Barnsley, adds that Crozier was told: ‘If you go to Newcastle and get permission to speak to him, and Bobby says: “I’m not interested, but I’m prepared to help you out as a stopgap,” that would be better than nothing. Adam was sent away from the meeting with two alternatives to explore: Bobby Robson with a young English coach, or if not, Sven. After that first meeting, Bobby was in front of Sven. Everybody’s perception was: “Ideally, we appoint an Englishman. If not, we’ll go overseas.” Bobby only ceased to be the front runner when Newcastle were approached and said they wouldn’t release him.’

Crozier denies much of this and, in fairness, it is his version of events that ties in with that of Noel White. During the course of his research, Crozier said, he relied heavily on the advice of Sir Alex Ferguson, who had ruled himself out of the running for the job, but was willing to assist the FA in their quest.

‘I spent a lot of time with Alex, who was tremendously helpful. The night Manchester United played PSV Eindhoven in the Champions’ League (18 October 2000, seven days after the Finland game) he gave me a couple of hours at Old Trafford. When I went to see him I actually had a dual purpose, although nobody knew it at the time. I went to pick Alex’s brain about getting the right manager, but also to get his agreement to let us have Steve McClaren, his assistant, as part of our new coaching team. I wanted continuity, a long-term strategy, and I’d got the sub-committee to agree that we’d have three or four coaches under the manager, none of whom would be “The Chosen One”, as Bryan Robson was under Terry Venables, but any one of whom might emerge as the heir apparent over a period of time. For me, you see, there were two searches going on at the same time. Everyone thought I was looking for an England manager, but I was looking for a manager and his back-up. As it turned out, I ended up getting the support team first: Steve from United and Peter Taylor from Leicester, plus Sammy Lee, from Liverpool, for the Under-21s.’

When it came to the top job, Ferguson helped to point Crozier in Eriksson’s direction. ‘Having found out as much as I could about potential targets, and having listened to what expert witnesses like Alex had to say, I became absolutely convinced that Sven was our man after that first week. Alex was very helpful. We also talked about his players’ feelings about the England set-up. When they went back to Manchester United after international duty with us, what were they saying about us? From what they had told him, and from what he had seen, what did Alex think about our way of doing things? Where were we going wrong? That helped us to identify the sort of person we needed to fix it.’

Where Crozier and Ridsdale agree is that after the first week, Eriksson topped the wanted list. Crozier says the peripatetic Hodgson (ex-Malmo, Switzerland, Grasshoppers, Internazionale, Blackburn, Udinese etc) fell at the first hurdle, failing the ‘sustained success’ test, and Ferguson and Houllier were discounted on grounds of unavailability. So, too, was Wenger. Arsenal were naturally keen to keep the manager who led them to the Double in 1998, and the presence of Dein, their vice-chairman, on the sub-committee inevitably led to suggestions of a conflict of interests. The smooth poise for which Dein is renowned was disturbed momentarily when Wenger went on Sky TV and said he could not understand why England had not asked about him.

Before cottoning on to Eriksson, the media had made the Arsenal man the favourite for the job. So was he considered or not? Dein havered, saying: ‘He [Wenger] had gone public many, many times with the fact that he was going to respect his contract with Arsenal, and this was all about the art of the possible. Who could we get? There was no point wasting our energies on somebody we couldn’t get.’

When the sub-committee met for the second and last time, Eriksson was ‘a clear front runner’, Crozier says. The fans’ favourite, Venables, had disappeared off the radar. ‘If you measure his record against all our criteria, he didn’t stack up as well as Sven. It’s a subjective thing, and I’m sure there are people who still disagree, but if you are a leader, you have to back your judgement. The only time I got upset during the whole process was when some journalist friends of Terry’s wrote that we’d chosen integrity as one of our criteria specifically to rule him out, as if he didn’t have any. I found that upsetting for him because: (a) I wouldn’t want a friend to write that about me, and (b) it wasn’t true, so it was very unfair. We were looking for a broad spectrum of qualities, and my hunch was that Sven had them all – or at least more so than anybody else we were considering.’

Eriksson had been Crozier’s choice from day one. ‘That wasn’t the case with everyone on the sub-committee,’ he acknowledged. ‘Peter [Ridsdale] was always for Bobby, and initially other people had other views. At our first meeting some said we should go for Alex Ferguson, others Arsene Wenger, and there was a lot of discussion about Johann Cruyff. But at that second meeting, it became unanimous for Sven. I have to say I did corral everyone in, admittedly with David Dein’s assistance. It was a case of: “OK, is everyone now 100 per cent up for this?” They were.’

Ridsdale begs to differ again. ‘For Adam to say he forced the issue is wrong. We followed a very methodical process. And if David feels he initiated it, that is disingenuous, because he wasn’t at the first meeting. With the benefit of hindsight, Adam might say: “I always had this solution in mind, I led them there,” but I don’t think that’s true because we started with a blank sheet of paper, worked through all the possibilities, and everybody had their particular suggestions written down.

‘I don’t remember who first mentioned Eriksson – it might have been Adam, to be fair. I said Bobby Robson. I was saying that whatever we did, we should have the next man in place, so we wouldn’t have to go through the whole process again from scratch. The young bucks, maybe two or three coaches, should work alongside the main man, so that a ready-made successor could come from Peter Taylor, Steve McClaren or Bryan Robson, whose names all came up.’

Had Dein blocked any move in Wenger’s direction? Ridsdale was adamant that he did not. ‘People said because I was on the sub-committee, David [O’Leary] couldn’t be picked, which was a joke. He was on the list, but what had he done? He was never seriously considered for that reason. The same people said Wenger couldn’t get the job because of David [Dein], but it was at that first meeting that Sven emerged as our preferred foreign candidate, and David wasn’t even there. Wenger was considered, as was Alex Ferguson, but Sven was the number one non-English choice.’

Dein, away on Arsenal business, could have been contacted by mobile phone, but was not consulted either before or during that first meeting. Had he had any input? ‘No,’ Ridsdale said, emphatically. ‘Well, I know he didn’t speak to me, or to Dave Richards, Noel White or Howard Wilkinson. To Crozier … who knows? But Crozier never said: “I’ve spoken to Dein and we wouldn’t get Arsene Wenger.”’

For the second meeting, it was Ridsdale’s turn to be absent, on club business. Everybody else was present, Dein included. Ridsdale says: ‘All I know about what happened was from a briefing I had straight afterwards by phone, and that was to say that the second meeting had confirmed the conclusions of the first, and that thereafter Adam had the authority to go and try to get Sven.’

CHAPTER FOUR THE MOVE

Having agreed on the man they wanted, the Football Association’s problem was that Eriksson was under contract to Lazio, the Italian champions, who were still in the Champions’ League and intent on winning the European Cup. Naturally they wanted to keep the coach who had brought them the coveted scudetto. Adam Crozier, however, was not about to be deterred, and within two days of his first approach to the Roman club he had his man. He recalled: ‘My attitude was: “If you’re going to go for someone, do it properly. Make your move quickly, equipped with everything you need to get the business done. Get it done there and then, on the spot.” So I prepared everything I’d need to have with me when I got to speak to Sven about the job. I had analysis of matches, profiles of the players – not just the senior squad but the Under-21s and those coming through the youth scheme, right down to the Under-15s. I had videos of all the key games, statistics, everything. That enabled me to say to him: “Look, this is where we are, this is where we’re going, this is what we want to try to do.”

‘The other key thing when I made the move was to be able to offer our man a long-term contract. I’d got the people here [the FA] to agree to five years. If our objective was to win a major tournament by 2006, the contract should last until then. We needed stability, and five years provided the opportunity to train up people with the potential to take over.’

Crozier and David Dein, who has emerged in recent years as the most dynamic member of the FA board, flew to Rome by private jet on Sunday 29 October 2000, and prepared overnight for their meeting with Lazio and their coach the following day. Crozier said: ‘We met Sergio Cragnotti [the Lazio president], his son, Massimo, Dino Zoff [Lazio vice-president and former coach] and one or two others at the club’s training ground, at Formello. Sven was present for some of the time. Cragnotti senior was an absolute gentleman. Top class. We explained why we wanted to speak to Sven, and Mr Cragnotti said he was caught in two minds. Lazio had just enjoyed their most successful season ever, and were on a high, but he and Sven had become very close. A bond had been built up between them over a momentous season, and he didn’t want to stand between his friend and what he wanted. From our point of view, that was a great attitude – one not many would have taken.

‘At this stage Mr Cragnotti asked Sven to join us, and said: “Do you want to talk to them?” Sven said: “Yes, I would very much like to. This is the sort of job I’ve dreamed about, it’s something I’ve always wanted to try.” The second stage was for us to talk to him, and we did that there and then. Everything was agreed between us within 24 hours.’ Money was never a problem, Crozier insisted, and nor should it have been, with £2.5m a year, plus bonuses, on the table. In comparison, just four years earlier Terry Venables was on £125,000 a year when he took England to the semi-finals at Euro 96, and Kevin Keegan had been getting £800,000 annually. At Lazio, Eriksson earned £1.75m a year, tax free. ‘The third stage,’ Crozier said, ‘was agreeing with Mr Cragnotti the timing of the changeover. Initially, Lazio were unhappy about Sven leaving them before the end of the season because they were still in the Champions’ League, but eventually we managed to persuade them to meet us halfway. Sven would join us part-time from February, in time for our game against Spain at Villa Park. Sven wanted to finish on a high with Lazio, to repay Mr Cragnotti. He didn’t want to leave them in the lurch. There was that closeness between the two of them.’

Reluctantly, Crozier and Dein accepted that there was going to be an interregnum. Fortunately, they thought, they had just the right man to plug the gap. ‘We had a friendly coming up against Italy,’ Crozier explained, ‘and our initial objective was to get Bobby Robson as caretaker for that one game, with Steve McClaren and Peter Taylor backing him up. We were a bit surprised when Newcastle said no to that, and poor old Bobby was devastated. He really wanted to do it, and I don’t really see why he couldn’t have done so. After all, it was never the intention to have Bobby for more than that one game. What we said to Newcastle was: “Look, we don’t want your manager full-time because it’s not the future for us, but depending on who we go for [we didn’t want to give away who we were after], could we have him part-time?” Once we couldn’t get him, we made the decision to promote Peter and Steve. The reason for that was that Bobby was unique. He’d done the job before, and everybody would know that he wasn’t going to be our future because of his age. There was no point drafting somebody else in for one game, better to go with youth.’

Eriksson’s decision had been quickly made. He said: ‘My intention had been to stay another year with Lazio, but when the offer from the FA came, I immediately felt: “This is exactly what I want to do.” Such an offer comes only once in a lifetime. I never analysed the risks involved. I never thought: “I might not succeed.” On the contrary, I thought: “If I don’t accept, I won’t be able to sleep at night, wondering what I could have done with the job.” My intuition told me what to do, as it has done every time a new offer has come up. Of course it was a big change to take on England, but it was a bigger step, and an even greater risk, to move from the little village of Torsby and the coaching job with Degerfors to a club the size of Gothenburg. The step from Rome to London didn’t feel as big.’

He had not given much thought to being a foreigner. ‘Sweden had an English coach [George Raynor] in 1958, when they went to the World Cup finals. Why, then, shouldn’t a Swede take England? I read the book The Second Most Important Job In The Country, which is all about the England managers from 1949 through to Kevin Keegan. It showed that all of them were declared idiots at some time, even Sir Alf Ramsey, so I knew what to expect.’

It was as well that he was prepared. The FA’s decision to appoint their first non-English manager in 128 years of international football immediately polarized public opinion. John Barnwell of the League Managers’ Association and Gordon Taylor of the PFA objected strongly, on the grounds that the job should always go to an Englishman. Barnwell described it an ‘an insult’ to his members, and Taylor accused the Football Association of ‘betraying their heritage’. Their comments were widely reported, and, as tends to be the way of it, the newspapers split roughly on tabloid-broadsheet lines, with the likes of The Times and the Daily Telegraph open-minded while others were anything but. The Sun was at its most xenophobic, declaring: ‘The nation which gave the game of football to the world has been forced to put a foreign coach in charge of its national team for the first time in its history. What a climbdown. What a humiliation. What a terrible, pathetic, self-inflicted indictment. What an awful mess.’ Jeff Powell, in the Daily Mail, was outraged, fulminating: ‘England’s humiliation knows no end. In their trendy eagerness to appoint a designer manager, did the FA pause for so long as a moment to consider the depth of this insult to our national pride? We sell our birthright down the fjord to a nation of seven million skiers and hammer throwers who spend half their year living in total darkness.’ The speed with which these opinions changed, once Eriksson’s England started winning, will be seen later.

The new manager was presented to the English media at the ungodly hour of 8am on 2 November 2000. The venue chosen was the Sopwell House Hotel, St Albans, which is convenient for Luton airport, and the time unusually early to enable Eriksson to get back to Rome (by private plane, of course) in time to take Lazio’s training that afternoon. His arrival at the hotel, which used to be Arsenal’s training base, was akin to a presidential procession. Surrounded by FA flunkies, who resembled an FBI close protection squad, his every step through the corridors was tracked by television camera crews, whose lights had him transfixed, like a startled rabbit caught in the headlamps of an oncoming car. The tabloid rottweilers were out in force, scrutinizing his every move and nuance. Much was made of the fact that he wore a poppy, with Remembrance Day in the offing. The Daily Express sarcastically (but accurately) observed that, coming from a nation of pacifists, he must have had it pinned on him by one of the FA’s spin doctors.

Once television and radio had finished playing ‘how-do-you-feel?’ softball, the press let fly with a few bumpers. Eriksson had little experience of English football, how was his knowledge? Could he name, say, the Leicester City goalkeeper, or the Sunderland left-back? He failed on both counts, and there were those (the author among them) who took delight in pointing out that the two players in question, Ian Walker and Michael Gray, should both be in contention for places in the next England squad. What about David Beckham? Was his best position on the right of midfield or in the centre? ‘Please don’t ask me that today,’ Eriksson said. ‘For sure he’s a great player, but I think I need at least a couple of practices with him before I decide that.’

What did he have to do to turn the England team into winners? ‘The most important thing, as always, is to create a good ambience within the group. If you don’t have that feeling, you will never get good results.’ Tactically, he was not prepared to disclose whether he would be playing 4–4–2 or 4–3–3. ‘But the players’ attitude to the game is much more important, and much more difficult to get right, than finding a formation.’ He was not going to discuss individual players before he started working with them. What he would say was that there was no question of abandoning the 2002 World Cup and concentrating on building beyond it. ‘I think you can do both. Of course you should plan for the future, but to give up on qualifying for the World Cup would be very stupid. As long as there is the slightest possibility still there, you should go for it. I think it is possible to win the group. Even second place in qualifying could get you a gold medal in the end. Give up at this stage? I don’t know those words. I never give up.’

Eriksson met every googly with a bat of Boycottesque straightness, hiding behind his unfamiliarity with the language when it suited his purpose, to the frustration of his inquisitors. Rob Shepherd, then of the Daily Express, whose nononsense directness has been the bane of many a manager’s life, turned to me afterwards and said: ‘Christ, to think it’s going to be like that for the next five years.’

It was announced at the press conference, almost by way of afterthought, that Eriksson’s number two at Lazio, Tord Grip, would be coming with him to England, as David Dein put it: ‘as his eyes and ears’. In fact Grip, unlike his boss, was released immediately by his Italian employers, and was scouting in England for three months before Eriksson finally arrived to join him. It was Grip, for example, who spotted, and recommended, Chris Powell, the 30–something Charlton Athletic full-back, who was the first rabbit to be pulled from the new managerial hat.

England’s next game, however, was the friendly fixture against Italy in Turin, where Eriksson and Grip were no more than observers. It was left to Peter Taylor to start the overdue process of rejuvenation with a young, forward-looking squad, and a team led by David Beckham for the first time. England lost 1–0, but gave a good account of themselves and Eriksson, who attended the match, was encouraged by the likes of Gareth Barry, Rio Ferdinand, Jamie Carragher and Kieron Dyer. His tenure was brief, but Taylor served England well by giving younger players the opportunity to catch the eye. The public liked what they saw, and Eriksson had a fair wind.

Meanwhile, events had taken a turn for the worse at Lazio. The revelation that their coach was keen to leave them for pastures new did nothing for the players’ motivation, and after the England announcement, on 2 November, Lazio’s form disintegrated. They won only six of 14 games, dropping to fifth in Serie A, and Eriksson saw his Champions’ League dream turn to ashes with defeats by Leeds and Anderlecht. By the turn of the year it was apparent that one manager could not properly serve two masters, and on 9 January 2001 Eriksson resigned at Lazio to devote his full attention to England.

The quick-break decision had been made in a petrol station, during the drive to training. It was then that he realized he was running on empty. ‘I just knew I couldn’t go on.’ Minutes later, he drove through the gates of Formello and told his players he was on his way. There were tears, and later an emotional meeting with Cragnotti. At a highly charged press conference, Cragnotti said the man who took Lazio to the title would always find a home back in Rome. ‘I want to see you back here, celebrating a long list of victories with England.’ To which Eriksson leaned across and told him: ‘Yes, and with the World Cup.’

Breaking his contract had cost Eriksson £1.3m, but money was the last thing on his mind. ‘I didn’t like what I did, but it was best for the club. Results in football are everything, and the results had been bad. It was better for Lazio to have somebody else come in and administer the shock that was needed.’

The Lazio fans had been resentful when the news broke of his imminent defection, but that same night he was given a standing ovation when he took his seat for a match against the Chinese national team, which was part of Lazio’s centenary celebrations. The warmth of the reception melted ‘The Ice Man’, reducing him to tears. ‘And believe me, I am not a man who cries easily.’ Cragnotti led the Roman salute, with the words: ‘It is only right that Lazio applauds the man who gave us so much.’