Sven-Goran Eriksson

Eriksson says of that first season: ‘During my first year, IFK were regarded as a rebellious bunch, and we suffered disciplinary problems, with too many bookings and sendings-off. But we overcame that by hard work, and in the end our behaviour was impeccable, on and off the field. We travelled a lot in the cup, and we used the trips to build a winning culture. Nobody moaned about waiting times, depressing airports or grotty hotel rooms.’

A rebellious bunch? Schiller, now a football agent, wouldn’t go quite that far, but admits: ‘We came to be looked upon like rock stars, and after games we would all go out for a few drinks. I have to say we did have fun on all our trips.’ The downside of this good-time culture saw Schiller spend a month in prison for a drink-driving conviction, when he took his car in search of further refreshment after a party at home. ‘It was a long time ago, and I learned my lesson,’ he says. Eriksson said his piece at the time, but after that was steadfastly supportive, and welcomed the prodigal son back to the club immediately upon his release. ‘He is a very understanding man, and it was not a problem after that,’ Schiller told me.

That first season, Stromberg had been the major find. He told me: ‘Because I was only young, and already 6 ft 5 in, I’d had a lot of back trouble the previous season, when I was 18. But when Sven took over, he promoted me straight away to the first-team squad, and after a couple of months he put me in the team, in the centre of midfield. I couldn’t believe it, because I’d had so many problems with injuries and it took a lot of courage for him to do it. Straight away he left out some of the older players and gave the younger ones their chance.’

Of Eriksson’s early difficulties, Stromberg says: ‘When he arrived, he was unknown, which was one problem. Another was that he made us play in the English style – long balls and pressing the opposition all over the pitch. In Sweden, the national team and the bigger clubs were used to the short passing game, the continental way, and for a long time there was much criticism of Sven’s way of playing.’

The following season, Gothenburg dropped back to third in the league again, behind Osters Vaxjo and Malmo, while their performance in the European Cup Winners’ Cup was no better than ordinary. After making hard work of beating Ireland’s Waterford and Panionios of Greece, both on a 2–1 aggregate, they fell apart against Terry Neill’s Arsenal, and were trounced 5–1 at Highbury in the first leg, in March 1980. The North Bank was shocked into silence when Torbjorn Nilsson opened the scoring on the half-hour, but Alan Sunderland equalized within a minute, and after 35 minutes Arsenal were ahead, through David Price. Sunderland again, Liam Brady and Willie Young were also on target to make it a deflating night for Eriksson and his team. The return, in Sweden, was goalless, and remarkable only for a nasty scare for Neill and his players when their plane’s landing gear malfunctioned, causing their first approach to Gothenburg airport to be aborted.

It had not been a good season, and criticism was mounting. ‘Sven’s second season was more of a problem than his first,’ Stromberg says. ‘There was a big debate about our long-ball game, but we kept playing our way, and the national team stuck to theirs. Sven is very hard-headed, he will always keep to his way. By this time, the team and the whole club were behind him, but there was a lot of criticism from the fans and the press. Eventually, of course, everybody in Sweden went over to the English style. It all started just before Sven. Bob Houghton was at Malmo and Roy Hodgson at Halmstad, and they first brought that way of playing to Sweden. It became Sven’s way, too, and it brought good results for Gothenburg for the next ten years.’

For 1981, Eriksson strengthened his backroom staff with the recruitment of a new assistant, Gunder Bengtsson, and the team by signing three internationals. Sweden’s goalkeeper, Thomas Wernersson, joined from Atvidaberg, and Stig Fredriksson and Hakan Sandberg, defender and striker respectively, arrived from Vasteras and Orebro. Finance director Carlsson says: ‘When Sven joined us we already had quite a few good young players, so it was quite a good situation for a new trainer, but after a year or so he came to us with his proposals for improving the team. We backed his judgement as far as we could, depending on the finance involved. We were very impressed with the way he handled himself there. He would say to us: “This is a player I want to sign, but if we haven’t got enough money, I’ll accept that.”’

The consequent improvement was not quite enough, Gothenburg finishing second in the league again, four points behind Osters Vaxjo, and so far, Eriksson had done not much more than satisfy minimum expectations. Managerial take-off came with the annus mirablis that was 1982. That year, Gothenburg did the league and cup double and triumphed against all odds in the UEFA Cup, becoming the first Swedish club to win a European trophy. By this stage the erstwhile ‘Mr Who?’ had full and enthusiastic backing in the dressing room. Hysen says: ‘Even for a Swede, Sven was amazingly calm. In all the time I played for him, he never once raised his voice, and I can’t say that about any other manager. I used to imagine that he had a secret darkened room somewhere, and that he would go there on his own and shout, scream and kick the walls and trash the place. I know Swedes are supposed to be relaxed about things, but I thought it was impossible for a man to be that calm all the time.

‘On the other hand, Sven is also the best motivator I ever played for, and that is what you’d call a typical English quality. He treated everyone like adults, and they respected him for his honesty. If a player was dropped, Sven would take him to one side and explain his reasons. That approach made you even more determined to do well for the guy. He was an expert at man-management.’

Bengtsson, two years Eriksson’s senior, was manager of Molde, in Norway, when we spoke in April 2002. He told me: ‘We’ve known each other since 1975, when some mutual friends introduced us. I was player-coach at Torsby, Sven’s home town, before he took me to Gothenburg as his number two. We had a few problems at first, with results not going so well, but we had good players and eventually it all came right. Gothenburg had always been a team who played attacking football, but until Sven took charge they weren’t well organized, and so they hadn’t been winning anything. Implementing any new style takes time, all the more so when it is as unpopular as Sven’s was at first, but when results picked up, everything we were doing was accepted.’

Stromberg by now had developed into a key player, for club and country; indeed Gothenburg as a unit had matured nicely and were approaching their collective peak. They were still part-timers (Hysen was an electrician, Tord Holmgren a plumber), and were patronized by the European elite, but everybody was about to sit up and take notice. The first round of the UEFA Cup brought a routine demolition of Finland’s Haka Valkeakosi, and there was no hint of the glory nights to come when Sturm Graz, of Austria, pushed the Swedes all the way before going out on an aggregate of 5–4. By the third round, however, Gothenburg were into their stride, beating Dinamo Bucharest at home (3–1) and away (1–0), and when they eliminated Valencia in the quarter-final it was clear that they were a force to be reckoned with. Stromberg remembers the trip to Spain with much amusement. He says: ‘You have to remember that the club didn’t really have the money to compete at this level. When we played Valencia away, we didn’t have any directors with us. The club had severe financial problems at the time, and the four directors were all standing down. For nearly a month we had no administration, and when we went to Valencia there were no directors, just the Swedish journalists with us.

‘There was a formal dinner the night before the match, and we had nobody to sit at the table with the Valencia directors, so we took the club doctor, a radio reporter and the kit man. It was unbelievable, to see these guys eating with the people who owned one of the biggest clubs in Spain.’

The financial situation had improved by the time the semi-final brought Gothenburg up against Germany’s Kaiserslautern, who had just inflicted the heaviest-ever European defeat (5–0) on Real Madrid, and were therefore hot favourites. ‘We were getting 50,000 gates for the European games, and Valencia had eased the cashflow problem,’ Stromberg explained. ‘Everything really started to come together that month. We were saved, as a big club, by our European run.’ Again Eriksson’s game plan worked to perfection. The draw and away goal he wanted from the first leg in Germany shifted the odds in Gothenburg’s favour for the return, and a 2–1 win at home completed the upset. ‘At that time,’ Stromberg says, ‘I think we could have taken on almost any team in the world. We were very confident, we had a lot of good players and we had a method we all believed in. Everybody believed in the things we were doing, the way we were playing. In Europe, the teams we played were having a lot of trouble with Sven’s pressing game. They were used to being allowed to build up their passing from their own half, without pressure, but we started challenging for the ball very high up the field, and worked very hard at it. It also helped, of course, that there was a lot of quality in that side.’

The final was against another Bundesliga team, Hamburg, who were stronger than Kaiserslautern, and confident of winning with something to spare. Only once before had a Swedish club reached a European final, and the poverty of Malmo’s performance in losing 1–0 to Nottingham Forest in the 1979 European Cup Final was not about to strike fear into Franz Beckenbauer and company. Bengtsson says: ‘To be honest, getting to the final was a surprise, even for us, but there was a good feeling, a good spirit about that team – the best I’ve ever known. We also had an advantage. When a team like Gothenburg are coming up from nowhere, nobody really believes they are going to go all the way, and obviously it helps if you have a good team and nobody really takes you seriously. In the quarter-finals, nobody had said much or thought much about us, so Valencia expected to win. You could tell that. It was the same in the semi-finals, and particularly in the final. Nobody thought we could play as well as we did. We took them by surprise.’

Gothenburg were ten games unbeaten coming into the final, with their twin strikers, Torbjorn Nilsson and Dan Corneliusson, in prolific form. The first leg, in the Ullevi stadium, left the tie intriguingly balanced. Tord Holmgren’s only goal of the match, in the 87th minute, gave the underdogs a lead to defend, but Hamburg thought they could easily overcome such a slender deficit at home. ‘Nobody gave us a chance over there,’ Eriksson recalled. ‘Hamburg had flags printed with “Hamburg SV winners of the UEFA Cup ‘82” all over them. You could buy them before the game. I still have one at home.’

His own players certainly regarded themselves as rank outsiders, albeit in a two-horse race. Stromberg says: ‘An hour and a half before the game, Sven told us: “You know, we have a good chance here.” We all looked at him thinking “Yeah, yeah. A good chance. How?” He said: “We’re a team who score a lot of goals, and we’re always likely to get one. Then, if we get one, they’ll have to get three.” Sven reminded us that nobody had scored three times against us all season, and that got us thinking. We turned to one another with looks that said: “Yeah, he’s right, we do have a chance here.”’

Teutonic speculation focused on whether Beckenbauer would play and pick up the one trophy that had eluded him. Two weeks away from retirement ‘The Kaiser’ had only just recovered from a bruised kidney, and had been among the substitutes a few days earlier, for the 5–0 drubbing of Werder Bremen. Ernst Happel, Hamburg’s Austrian coach, said: ‘There is a possibility Beckenbauer will play, but there is often a hitch between theory and practice.’ Too true; the great man never appeared. Nevertheless, Happel still had three formidable German internationals – Manni Kaltz, Felix Magath and Horst Hrubesch – at his command. Victory would be a formality.

The trip had inauspicious beginnings for Glenn Schiller. ‘I’d forgotten my boots, left them in Sweden,’ he says. ‘Sven wasn’t pleased. He said: “The only thing you have to bring with you is your boots, and you can’t be relied on to do that.” He made me buy new ones.’ Keen to get out of the manager’s way, Schiller was sitting in the toilet as the final preparations were made. ‘I was starting on the bench, so I was in no great hurry, and I was sat in there reading the match programme, with all the adverts for Hamburg cup-winning souvenirs. You could see that they had taken too much for granted, and definitely underestimated us.

‘When I came out, I could hear the crowd yelling and the dressing room was empty. I was locked in. I was banging on the door, trying to get out, but nobody came, and in the end I had to climb over the door. I was probably in there on my own for ten minutes. Just as I got out, Glenn Hysen was injured, and Svennis was asking everybody on the bench “Where’s Schiller?” They looked around and told him: “He’s coming.” I was running around the track and was sent straight on, so you could say I did my warm-up in the toilet! I didn’t get to sit on the bench, I sat on the throne instead.’

Hamburg started urgently, seeking the early goal which would square the tie and give them the initiative but, against all expectations, it was Gothenburg who played the better football. The Germans were too hurried, making mistakes which were ruthlessly exploited. After 26 minutes Eriksson’s underdogs were ahead, Tommy Holmgren, the younger brother of Tord, breaking down the left and crossing for Corneliusson to score with a powerful shot. Hamburg’s morale nosedived, Gothenburg’s soared, and the issue was put beyond doubt after 61 minutes, when Nilsson, who was outstanding throughout, outran Magath over 40 yards before making it 2–0 on the night. The Swedes were now 3–0 up on aggregate with away goals in their favour. Hamburg needed four goals in half an hour, but were a broken team, and disappointed fans were streaming out of the Volksparkstadion when Nilsson was fouled inside the penalty area and Stig Fredriksson scored from the spot.

Stromberg says: ‘It was one of those nights when everything is just perfect. Torbjorn Nilsson, our centre-forward, was probably the best striker in Europe for two or three years around that time, but I don’t think it was down to him, or the midfield, or the defence. Everything, everybody, was just perfect. I remember Hrubesch turning to me during the game and saying: “You know, we could play you ten times and never win.” On our form that night, he was right. We were that good. Every player knew what to do, where to be at any given time. Throughout the 90 minutes, I don’t remember any player being caught out of position once. Sven had prepared us that well.’

After 4,000 exultant Swedes had acclaimed their heroes on a lap of honour, Eriksson said: ‘I’m the happiest man alive. I thought we might sneak it 1–0, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that we could come to Hamburg and score three.’ Happel offered no excuses. The first goal had been crucial, fracturing his team’s morale, he said. ‘In the end, they could have scored four or five.’

For winning the UEFA Cup, the Gothenburg players received £50,000 a man on top of their basic salaries of £1,500 per month. Schiller immediately put a big hole in his bonus by buying a Porsche. ‘Glenn Stromberg bought one too,’ he said, chuckling at the memory. ‘We were the two single guys in the team, you understand.’

Eriksson was also in the outside lane. Suddenly all Europe had heard of ‘Sven Who?’, and Gothenburg couldn’t hope to keep him. But he had built a young team good enough to dominate Swedish football for the next five years under Bengtsson, who succeeded him, and to win the UEFA again in 1987.

CHAPTER NINE LISBON CALLING

At the end of the 1981/82 season, Benfica were looking for a coach to replace the veteran Hungarian, Lajos Baroti. The world-renowned Lisbon ‘Eagles’ had done the league and cup double in his first season, 1980/81, but second place in 1982 was not good enough for a club with stratospheric standards (winners of 30 championships since 1935, they had never finished below fourth), and he had to go. Gothenburg may be Sweden’s biggest club, but Benfica operate on a higher plane entirely. They have always been number one in Portugal, and were, for a time, pre-eminent in Europe, making five appearances in the European Cup Final in the 1960s. When they want a coach, they usually get their man, and so it was in 1982 when, impressed by Eriksson’s triumph with Gothenburg in the UEFA Cup, they sent a private jet to fetch him and offer him the job.

His first task was to change the players’ mentality. Eriksson explained: ‘This was a team who played well at home, with a lot of courage, but as soon as they had an away game it was a different story. It seemed that in the Portuguese league they had learned that by winning at home and drawing away they could win the championship. Their away matches in Europe were particularly disappointing. They didn’t want to run and challenge the opposition and kept falling back. In the first round of the UEFA Cup, against Real Betis, I lost my temper. We were losing 1–0, but the players were happy. Losing 1–0 there was OK because we would beat them at home. At half-time I was furious. “What are you trying to do?” I said. “Are you here to play football or not?” One of the players spoke up. “Sure,” he said, “this is how we play away from home.” So I said: “The pitch is no bigger here than it is at home, the grass is the same. If you can play football at home, you must be able to play football here.”

‘We turned the match around and won 2–1. I was able to change their attitude to away matches. They played with spirit away, too. The team’s self-confidence improved dramatically. From then on, Benfica always played attacking football, always played to win, home or away.’ Even by their standards, Eriksson’s start was extraordinary. After his first 11 league matches, he had a 100 per cent record, a maximum 22 points banked and just four goals conceded. Going into 1983, Benfica were still unbeaten and a new club record had been set – played 28, won 26, drawn 2, lost none, goals for 85, goals against 15 – when they eventually slipped up for the first time, losing 1–0 away to their arch rivals, Sporting Lisbon. Even that took a dodgy penalty, and Eriksson was characteristically sanguine in defeat. ‘The run had to end some time,’ he said with a shrug. ‘It’s no great catastrophe.’ Indeed it wasn’t, as Benfica had a comfortable four-point lead over Porto, who had the league’s leading scorer, Fernlando Gomes, in harness with Micky Walsh, formerly of Blackpool, Everton and Queens Park Rangers in attack. Eriksson’s strikers were Nene, an experienced Portuguese international, and Zoran Filipovic, a big, bustling Yugoslav. The other key elements in the team were Manuel Bento, Portugal’s veteran goalkeeper, Humberto Coelho, the captain and accomplished right-back who was to become the country’s most capped player, Diamantino, a goalscoring winger and the only ever-present that season, and Fernando Chalana, an attacking midfielder who six years earlier, at 17, had become Portugal’s youngest-ever international.

The fans, dubious at first about the appointment of a 34-year-old Swede, were eating out of Eriksson’s hand after his first 16 league and cup games had all been won. From ‘Who is this young upstart?’ it had become ‘So what if he is the same age as his goalkeeper?’ The first sign of a problem came towards the end of February 1983, when a club versus country row blew up before Portugal’s match at home to West Germany. The national team had played another friendly, against France, a week earlier, and Benfica and Sporting Lisbon, both of whom were involved in European club quarter-finals, strongly objected to their best players being asked to play six games in 17 days. Negotiations failed to resolve the situation, and on the eve of the international, the clubs declared that enough was enough, and withdrew their players’ labour. Of a total of 36 named by the manager, Otto Gloria, in his senior and Under-21 squads, 11 pulled out, including six from Benfica. Gloria, a Brazilian, who had managed the Portuguese team at the 1966 World Cup and Benfica when they lost the European Cup Final to Manchester United in 1968, now resigned, refusing to nominate replacements. ‘How can I work in this madhouse?’ he asked, rhetorically. But he did. The old boy was persuaded to change his mind, and sod’s law dictated that Portugal, who had been beaten 3–0 by France when at full strength, defeated the mighty West Germans 1–0 a week later with their reserves.

Midway through that first season, Eriksson made his first signing, going back to his old club, Gothenburg, for Glenn Stromberg, now 23. Stromberg told me: ‘I finished the season in Sweden and then joined Benfica. What Sven was doing took a lot of courage – from both of us. When I got there, he said: “Now Glenn, you’re going to take the place of the fans’ favourite player, Joao Alves.” He was a clever wide midfielder, a real crowd-pleaser, whose trademark was always to wear black gloves. There were a lot of people who didn’t believe their eyes the first time I played and Alves didn’t. At first, it was very difficult there. When Sven spoke to me in Swedish, all the other players would look at us and wonder what we were up to. So after a short time he said: “Let’s just try to talk only in Portuguese, even though we don’t know very much, first so that everybody can see that we’re one of them and second, so they’ll know what we’re talking about.” I think it was more of a mixing-in exercise than anything. He would have played me, whatever anybody thought. Sven was never one to be swayed by anyone else’s opinion. He thought me playing was the best way for Benfica to get results, and we had great results for the next 18 months. Alves still played for Portugal while I was playing in his place for Benfica.’

Stromberg had to wait what seemed like an eternity before joining the action. ‘I couldn’t play for a month or so when I first arrived’, he explained. ‘The clubs in Portugal were going to be allowed to play two foreign players at the same time, instead of just one, but the rule wasn’t changed immediately, as everybody had expected. They continued to permit only one, and there was a Yugoslav striker at Benfica, Filipovic, who was scoring a lot of goals and couldn’t be dropped because he was the only forward we had who was West European in style. He was tall, a very good header of the ball, and because of his tactics, Eriksson needed a guy like that up front. It was a frustrating time for me. In all, I was there for three months without playing. Then the rule change went through, we could play with two foreigners, and I played for the last three months of the season.’

Eriksson was tantalizingly close to winning the UEFA Cup with different clubs in successive years, Benfica losing their first European final since 1968 by the narrowest of margins. The competition was strong, with four English teams – Arsenal, Manchester United, Ipswich and Southampton – all going out in the first round, but Eriksson’s canny, cat-and-mouse tactics brought them past Real Betis, Lokeren and FC Zurich before they came up against Roma in the quarter-finals. The Italians, top of Serie A, and boasting international superstars in Falcao and Bruno Conti, had been good enough to put out Bobby Robson’s Ipswich, and were clear favourites. Benfica, however, won 2–1 in Rome, Filipovic scoring both their goals, then made it 3–2 on aggregate in the Stadium of Light, with Filipovic again on target. Falcao’s 86th minute consolation strike at least gave Roma the face-saver of an away draw. Benfica were through to the last four, where they needed the away-goals rule to overcome Romania’s first-ever European semi-finalists, Universitatea Craiova.

Eriksson approached the final, against Anderlecht, undefeated in 22 UEFA Cup matches, but that record went in the first leg against the Belgians, in Brussels on 5 May 1983. In their semi-final victory over Bohemians of Prague, two of Anderlecht’s goals were scored by Edwin Vandenbergh, their centre-forward, who was one of five Belgian World Cup players in a team coached by one-time record cap holder Paul Van Himst. Anderlecht’s strength was in midfield, where in Ludo Coeck, Frankie Vercauteren and Juan Lozano they had a unit that was the envy of most top clubs in Europe, but they were also well served up front, by Vandenbergh and Kenneth Brylle, the latter an energetic, incisive Dane.