Sven-Goran Eriksson

He invited the England players to try a mental exercise. They were to think about the phrases ‘I must’, ‘I should’, and ‘I’ve got to’. Then think of ‘I want to’, ‘I’ll have a go’, and ‘I can’. He explained: ‘It is fairly natural that we will not perform as well if we are forced to do something, rather than being free to do the same thing. It is also true that many sportsmen feel an unexpressed compulsion from their environment to reach certain goals. A typical example of the wrong type of thinking is the thought: “I mustn’t miss.” Close your eyes, relax and imagine you are in a match that is coming up. You see yourself on the pitch and you think: “Must, should, got to”. How do you feel? Don’t you feel that your personality withers and your mood sinks? After a moment or two, repeat the exercise, but think instead: “I want to”, “I’ll have a go”, “I can”. You immediately feel better, you’re practically raring to go.’

On less esoteric lines, Eriksson articulates his managerial style as follows: ‘First of all, the leader must be a complete master of what he is going to teach others, and he must also dare to be himself. Don’t try to be somebody else, or you will be found out very quickly. I would feel extremely stupid if I were to stand at the bench screaming and whistling at the players and the referee.

‘There must always be a target, or goal, and clear lines: “This is the way I want you to play football.” As a leader, you must be clear in what you say and explain everything to the group so that they really understand what you have in mind. When you have come that far, only one thing remains, and that may well be the most difficult one: having everybody in the team accept it. The important thing is having everyone understand that this is an agreement. Everybody must be moving in the same direction.

‘You have to be generous with praise, but in sport the big reward is the event itself. That’s where sport is simple and straightforward – win or lose, reward or punishment. You must set your goals high, but they must be realistic ones. You cannot go around promising titles if the material at your disposal is not good enough to do it. There is also the matter of fingertip feeling and intuition, which I think all good bosses have. When, as a coach, you have a team which is a goal or two down at half-time, you have to do something about it. Often it comes down to changing one or two players. It is a decision which seldom has a logical basis, but something has to be done. It does not always change the outcome of a game, but if it works, you will be called a genius.’

So is he a genius? He smiled at the suggestion. ‘A bit of modesty does not hurt. During the success of the past few years, more than once I have had to pinch myself. Then I say: “Hey there, Sven, you were born in Torsby.” By remembering your origins you get the proportions right in life.’

CHAPTER SIX AN ENFIELD TOWN FULL-BACK

Sven-Goran Eriksson spends nearly every Christmas at the parental home in Torsby, and if you saw the place you wouldn’t blame him. To visit this sleepy, snowy Swedish village in winter is to be put in mind of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas idyll, and to wonder how anybody could ever leave.

Sven-Goran was born on 5 February 1948, while the rest of the world was preoccupied with Gandhi’s assassination and the gathering crisis in Berlin. He was the first child for Sven senior, a 19-year-old bus conductor, and Ulla, who supplemented the family income with a variety of jobs, which took her behind the counter at the village newsagent and later to the local hospital, as an auxiliary.

Torsby these days is ‘New England’ in more ways than one, a postcard-pretty collection of clapboard houses surrounded by frozen forest and lakes. Originally a centre for iron production, drawing on power from the Klaralven, or Clear river, there is no industry to speak of now. There is a high-tech, state-of-the-art sawmill, owned by the Finns, and a small electronics plant, but the main employer is the hospital. With a population of 5,000, the village is the municipality for the northern part of the mostly wooded picturesque province of Varmland, which measures some 200 km in length. The region prospers on two tourist seasons, catering for all the usual winter sports and summer activities like canoeing and rafting. Lake Vanern, the largest in Scandinavia, is a magnet for anglers, while for wildlife enthusiasts there are elk and wolves in abundance. The wolf is Varmland’s official emblem.

It is against this bucolic background that young Sven, or ‘Svennis’ as he was quickly to become known, was raised. He grew up in a small, working-class home – so small that a lounge-diner-kitchenette was the main living room. A neighbour recalled: ‘They weren’t poor, but they had hard times. There were not many luxuries.’ It was a close family, in every sense, and the England coach still talks to his parents on the telephone every day.

Ski jumping, with a club called SK Bore, was his passion more than football when he was very young. He told me: ‘I learned from the age of five, and became quite good at it. With the club, I travelled all over Varmland, and into Norway, for competitions. It is a sport you have to start when you are very young, and have no fear. You’d never dare to have a go when you were older. The trouble was, when I was little they didn’t have skis for kids, we had to use adult ones. To get mine to the top of the slope, ready to push off, I had to carry them up one at a time. They were very heavy for a little boy, much too heavy to take two.’ In common with all the other children making their first jump, the diminutive Svennis started at 15 ft, before eventually working his way up to 65. ‘I loved it,’ he says, ‘but by the age of 15 I had to choose between ski jumping and football, and football won.’

The extremes in Swedish society made him a young socialist of the old school. ‘When I was young, I was far out on the left politically. I thought everything was unfair then. I was never politically active, but I was radical in my opinion.’ A friend from his teenage days said: ‘One of his dreams, when he was 19 or 20, was to move to South America, buy a plantation there and be nice to the workers, paying them well. He wanted to be a philanthropist.’

Charity had its limits, however. Sven’s brother Lars, eight years his junior, recalls how Sven always had to beat him at everything, irrespective of the age difference. ‘He was very competitive, even when I was little.’

Eriksson is a typical product of his environment, according to Mats Olsson, of the Torsby Tourist Bureau, who has worked with him in promoting the area. Olsson told me: ‘If you meet his parents, you will see where he got his calmness and laid-back character from. He’s a typical guy from around here. We have a saying that goes: “Let ordnar sig alltid, och om det inte gor det, sa kvittar det.” Roughly translated, it means: “Everything will fix itself, and if it doesn’t it won’t be so bad.”’ Eriksson knows the adage well, but while he accepts the translation, he prefers his own interpretation. ‘I like to think it means: “Don’t worry about things you have no control over,” which is a good way to live your life.’ He accepts that the pace of life is very different in Varmland, which is backwoods in more ways than one. ‘Their attitude is: “Never do today what can be put off until tomorrow.” It must be nice to be able to live that way, stress-free.’

Discussing old times with Eriksson’s parents is no longer easy. My predecessor at The Sunday Times, Brian Glanville, tells a story about two groups of journalists, tabloid and broadsheet, journeying together through the desert. Stumbling upon an oasis, the broadsheet boys fall to their knees to drink, only to spot the tabloid hacks relieving themselves upstream. The waters around Torsby have been well and truly poisoned by the redtops, whose foot-in-the-door intrusions in search of dirt at the time of Eriksson’s appointment have left the locals wary, and sometimes downright hostile, to English visitors. His friends are very, very protective, and in the case of Sven and Ulla Eriksson, reporters from their son’s adopted country are no longer welcome. ‘They have had a bad rap from your people, who came pestering them, knocking on their door uninvited and misquoting them to make their stories more dramatic,’ Olsson explained. ‘The English reporters made them almost reclusive.’

Sven-Goran told me: ‘If you go to see them now, they will welcome you, and give you coffee, but they won’t tell you much I’m afraid. They learned to be like that the hard way. It started as soon as the FA offered me the job. In the next few days they [the tabloid press] interviewed my mother, my brother in Portugal, my son in America, my ex-wife, who I hadn’t seen for six years, my ex-mother-in-law and my old maths teacher in Torsby. I want to be friendly, but I must try to defend my privacy and my family, especially when lies are written.’

Understandable this may be, but it is also a great pity, not least because the Erikssons have an interesting story to tell. In an interview conducted through a third party, Ulla said: ‘His [Sven-Goran’s] foundations are still very much in the Torsby values we have here. We care deeply about home, family, community, hard work and respect. I think he has carried those values with him all his life, and he takes them with him in his work. He tries to instil these values in his football teams. When he was young, it was always sport, sport and more sport. In the summer months we only ever saw him at mealtimes. He would go out in the morning and only return to the house to eat. Then he would be out again, always to the athletics track or football pitch. It was the same during the winter. Then it would be skiing, skating and hockey. He was best at ski jumping. He was never afraid of how dangerous it might be. Sometimes he would fall, but he was never seriously injured.

‘Sport always came first in his life, but he was good at school as well. He loved to read books anything from children’s adventure stories to Hemingway. I had to join a book club just to keep up with his hunger for reading. His school grades were good, but he always did best at sport. With most children, if you throw a ball to them, they will try to catch it and throw it back to you. Sven didn’t. He always wanted to kick it. If there was no ball, he would make do with anything, usually stones in the street. I remember dressing him up in his best clothes and a new pair of shoes for a day out, and while he was waiting he went outside and had a kick around. His shoes were almost ruined. When I told him off, he said: “You won’t be saying that when I’m a football star.”’

Sven senior says of his pride and joy: ‘Even when he was young, he had the sort of mind which wanted to analyse everything he did. He kept a notebook to record all his performances and chart his progress at every sport. He was a well-behaved boy. He kept himself too busy to get into any trouble. But we never pushed him into anything. We just wanted him to grow up a good person and to fulfil himself.’

Sven remembers watching English football on television every Saturday. ‘From when I was about 14, I sat down with my father every Saturday afternoon and didn’t move. It was the highlight of the week. When I was younger, I supported Liverpool.’ And now? ‘Today I support England, no club team.’

A visit to the young Svennis’s secondary school, Frykenskolan, found his old maths teacher, Mats Jonsson, happy to reminisce about his most celebrated former pupil, who lived just across the road, 50 metres from the schoolhouse. Jonsson, 65 but still teaching part-time, also coached Torsby when Eriksson started playing, and told me: ‘I had him in my maths class from 13 to 16. He was a clever boy. Very quiet and calm. He did everything I hoped he would do. He was always a pleasant pupil. I had a class of just over 30, and he was always in the upper half at maths.

‘He played football every day, it was always his passion. I was the coach at Torsby FC at the time, and when he was 16 he came to play there. He was in the first team at 17, but while he was always regarded as a good footballer at school, at club level he was never more than second rate. He wasn’t top class, never a remarkable player. But in football, as at school, he worked very hard and made the best of himself. At that time, we played with two markers and three players just in front of them, and he played on the right of those three. Today, you would probably call it right wing-back. It was a role for which he had to be very fit. It was a hard job I know, I’ve tried it myself – always up and back, up and back. Sven was always a hard worker, so it suited him. When he went on to play for better teams, it was as an out-and-out defender. Eventually, he was right-back in a 4–4–2 formation.

‘We had a good team when he was here. We were in the Third Division for three years, then we got relegated. I have to say we had better – players in that Torsby team, but he was always a very nice person to work with. When I told him to do something, he did it. You could always rely on him. As a coach, you have to say to a player: “You do that, and don’t worry about anything else.” If I taught him anything, it was that. The team worked in zones. We divided the pitch into zones, and in your zone, you were the boss. You might be needed to help out elsewhere, but first and foremost you had to be in control of your own area. It’s the same today, and I like to think I gave Svennis a little bit of grounding there.’ Eriksson smiled at the notion. ‘Mats was a nice man, but he knew nothing about football,’ he told me. ‘When he was in charge, we did a lot of running. That’s all I remember.’

Academically, the young Eriksson was a diligent, above-average rather than brilliant scholar. The school records are kept on file at the municipal offices in Torsby where, obliging to a startling degree for a Brit accustomed to bureaucratic bloody-mindedness, they searched the vaults and came up with Svennis’s exam papers. In his last year at Frykenskolan, aged 16, he gained very respectable grades in all subjects, doing best in maths, where he was marked AB. In Swedish language, an essay entitled ‘A Summer Place’ brought him a BA, and he gained the same grade in English, where a paper notable for its meticulous, painstaking writing included the translation of such portentous phrases as ‘He looked at me with pain-filled eyes,’ and ‘They’re going to X-ray him soon.’ The marker’s corrective red ink was in evidence only once, where Eriksson had written: ‘I finely [sic] knew my husband would bee [sic] alive.’ It will do his reputation with England fans no harm at all that his worst subject was German, where he got a straight B, one delicious howler seeing his word ‘Chou’ [sic,] corrected to ‘Auf Wiedersehen’.

‘My English wasn’t up to much, but I was good at writing when I was at school,’ Eriksson says. ‘I wrote a lot about Ernest Hemingway and his life. He was my favourite author. I also read a lot about the Greek philosophers. For a time, I wanted to be a writer – a sports reporter – and I thought about going to a sports journalism college.’

At Torsby FC – the ground is called ‘Bjornevi’, or ‘Bear Meadow’ – there is Eriksson memorabilia everywhere. There are bigger, better stadia to be found in non-league football in England, but the importance of this one to the local community extends way beyond its raison d’etre, and on my various visits there were Mothers’ Union meetings, IT for Beginners classes, and sundry similar extracurricular activities making use of the clubhouse facilities. On entering, the first thing you notice, immediately to the left, is an impressive trophy cabinet with more than 50 exhibits, central to which is a framed portrait of Eriksson in England garb. Closer examination reveals an autographed picture of the England squad, next to the Junior Football Shield 1999 and the Svennis Cup for Boys and Girls (10–13 age group). There are pennants from every club Eriksson has managed, a framed picture of Sampdoria, 1992/93 vintage (Des Walker to the fore) and, tucked away above a waste bin bearing the legend ‘Knickers’, Torsby team groups from 1966 and 1967, featuring a youthful Svennis, complete with luxuriant blond thatch.

When I called, nobody at the club spoke English, but the two old stalwarts present could not have been more helpful. By sign language, a man who appeared to be the caretaker indicated that I should follow him, and took me on a five-minute drive to meet one of Eriksson’s former teammates and best friends, Morgan Oldenmark (formerly known as Karlsson) who, together with his brother, runs the family printing business. Morgan (he changed to his wife’s surname because Karlsson is so common in Sweden), played in the same Torsby team as Eriksson before the latter left in 1971. Oldenmark, né Karlsson, was a striker, Eriksson played right-back. ‘Sven did nothing special, he just did his job,’ his friend recalled. ‘He was a good player for a coach to have. He did what he was told. He never lost his composure, or his temper, never shouted. He was a fine person. He was quiet, but he did have a sense of humour. He liked to laugh, and when we all went out together he’d enjoy himself and behave just like everyone else. He wasn’t always, how do you English say it? A goody-goody.

‘When a few of us went to Austria, skiing, we shared a room and he enjoyed himself all right. He was quite a good ski jumper, and when we were alpine skiing he’d never make any of the turns I made to slow down. He was fearless, never afraid of the speed of the downhill. Another time, when he was playing for Sifhalla, Torsby went on a trip to Gran Canaria – no more than a holiday, really and Sven came with us.’ To emphasize Eriksson’s sociability, Morgan produced snaps of the players on sun loungers by the swimming pool, the England manager-to-be clearly having a laddish good time. ‘Sven has always been a bit reserved, but when he knows the company he does like a laugh.’

The man himself tells a slightly different story. ‘Being in the limelight has never appealed to me. At Christmas [2001] I was invited to a concert, and a dinner for 70 afterwards. I arrived at the concert after it had started, and then said “no” to the dinner. I don’t like the celebrity thing. If I go to a party, I prefer to sneak in and stand in the corner. I don’t want to appear to be better than anyone else because I don’t consider myself special. My parents were ordinary working-class people, and that has definitely influenced me.’

Torsby Football Club have had their days in the sun, too, and were in the top division in Sweden as recently as 1997. In Eriksson’s time, however, they were never better than Division Three. His first ‘trophy’, in the year England were winning the World Cup, was a tin of coffee presented to each of the Torsby players promoted to that level. Oldenmark spoke nostalgically of the era when 3,000 would turn out for the local derby against Rannberg. ‘Nowadays, it’s 150.’

When the teacher, Mats Jonsson, stopped coaching the club, the local baker, Sven-Ake Olsson, known as ‘Asen’, took over, using flour on a baking tray, in place of the conventional blackboard, to school Eriksson and company in tactics. His old protegé remembers him well – and not just for football. ‘I used to work in Asen’s bakery to make some money,’ Eriksson says. ‘He was good at his job – and he knew his football, too.’

Now in his mid-seventies, Olsson remembers his doughboy-cum-right-back for his activities off the field, rather than anything he did on it. ‘Sven never drank much, unlike the others, but he had plenty of female attention.’ Eriksson’s first serious relationship was with Nina Thornholm, a beauty pageant contestant he met on his 18th birthday. After dancing the foxtrot at the local hop, he escorted her home. ‘Nothing more.’ They dated for nearly a year (‘he was always well-mannered, very proper’, Nina, who is now in her fifties, insisted), eventually moving into a flat together. Earning next to nothing from what was virtually amateur football, Eriksson supported them by working in the social security office, dealing with sickness benefits, where his colleagues included Mats Jonsson’s wife. It was not the life he wanted, however, and the relationship foundered on his sporting ambitions.

At 19 he did his National Service, spending 12 months in the Swedish Army. It was not a regime he enjoyed. ‘It was compulsory, so I had to do it, but it was not my sort of life,’ he told me. ‘You knew when you woke up in the morning what you’d be doing every minute of the day until you went to bed at night, and that’s extremely boring. I’m not one who likes having everything regimented and programmed for him like that.’

It was with great relief that on demob he resumed his studies at Gymnasium Amal, a college 160 km from Torsby, and then at Orebro, where he took a university course in sports science. It was at teacher-training college, at Amal, that he met Ann-Christin Pettersson [‘Anki’ to her friends], the daughter of the principal. They started dating in 1970 and married on 9 July 1977. Intellectually well-matched, and both keen to better themselves, they seemed ideally suited. Their first child, Johan, was born on 27 May 1979.

Ann-Christin says: ‘His determination to achieve what he wanted in life was the first thing that appealed to me, so you could say football brought us together. He never gives in. He knows what he wants and goes for it. I should know. I was his wife for 23 years.’

While studying at Orebro, Eriksson joined Karlskoga, where Tord Grip was player-coach. It was a bigger club, with a modern stadium, but it would be wrong to draw the conclusion that Eriksson’s playing career was taking off. Sten Johansson, a midfielder, played in the same Karlskoga team and told me: ‘In those days, we were always mid-table in the Second Division. Sven was not much of a player, and never our first choice right-back. He came here, from Sifhalla, when he was studying at Orebro. It was his choice to come – the club didn’t go out to sign him, or anything like that. He asked to join because we were nearer to his studies. The club paid him almost nothing. I remember him as a good team man, nice to have around. He left when Tord took him to Degerfors, as assistant coach. That was the end of his playing career.’

He was not greatly missed. Bryan King, the former Millwall goalkeeper, has been living and working in Scandinavia since the 1970s as coach, manager, scout and players’ agent. He has known Eriksson since his playing days, and remembers him as ordinary, at best. ‘In English terms, I’d say he was an Enfield Town sort of full-back.’ The man himself feigns offence at that. ‘I wasn’t much of a player, but as far as I know, Bryan King never saw me play.’

Before he quit, Eriksson learned a valuable lesson. Playing for Karlskoga in a 3–0 defeat against Helsingborg in 1975 taught him, the hard way, to what extent full-backs were dependent upon protection. In his customary right-back station, he was given a never-to-be-forgotten run around by a fast winger by the name of Tom Johansson. ‘It was like a circus,’ Eriksson admitted. ‘It didn’t matter what I tried, he just disappeared away from me. I said: “Damn, I need support,” but at that time full-backs were not given support. They were good times for attackers, because there was so much space behind us. That game at Helsingborg changed my mind about defensive tactics, and made me think about pressing the opposition.’

Johansson, now a plumber in Helsingborg, said: ‘I don’t remember much about the game, but I do know that I was faster than him, and got past him three or four times.’ Another Helsingborg player that day, Thomas Sternberg, is now the club’s director of sport. He said: ‘Sven wasn’t a player you would notice. He did nothing to stand out. He wasn’t playing at the top level, so nobody had heard of Sven-Goran Eriksson at that time. In that game, Tom went past him a few times.

‘I’d say there is no great connection between being a good footballer and a good manager. Often it is just the opposite, and the players who are medium-grade have more to offer as coaches. Sven was not a great player, but he is a fantastic coach. The strong mentality all his teams have is unbelievable. We are very proud of him. He has been away a long time, and we are waiting for him to come home. I hope it will be as Sweden’s manager.’