Sven-Goran Eriksson: Former England manager dies aged 76 after cancer battle

Sven-Goran Eriksson , the former England manager, has died at the age of 76.

A statement on his official website confirmed he had died on Monday morning, surrounded by his family, after being diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.

Eriksson was born in the small town of Sunne and spent his playing career in the lower echelons of the Swedish football ladder before making his name as a coach.

From the late 1970s and through the 1980s, he built a reputation by winning trophies for Degerfors, Goteborg, Benfica and Roma. It was with Italian club Lazio where he arguably secured his greatest achievement in management by guiding them to only their second league title in 2000.

Shortly afterwards, he was made England’s first ever foreign manager in pursuit of a the country’s first major trophy since 1966.

Despite overseeing a much-vaunted but often unbalanced ‘Golden Generation’, Eriksson’s England teams faltered in the knockout rounds of major tournaments and never progressed past the quarter-final stage at either the World Cup or European Championships - with penalties their downfall on more than one occasion.

Eriksson nonetheless departed the Three Lions with an impressive win-rate and fond memories such as the 5-1 World Cup qualification win over Germany in Munich in 2001. He was also never far away from the headlines during his time in England where, apart from football, his private life was a seemingly endless source of fascination for newspapers.

A career around the globe followed with stints at Manchester City, Leicester, the Ivory Coast national team, China and, finally, as the manager of the Philippines national team which ended after the 2019 Asian Cup.

It was announced in January that Eriksson had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer , which sparked an outpouring of emotion and tributes from around the footballing world.

The boyhood Liverpool fan was given the chance to manage a Liverpool Legends team at Anfield in March and he also made appearances at Lazio and in Sweden. In June he was pictured back at Degerfors, the first club he managed, alongside mentor and longtime assistant Tord Grip, to mark his glittering career.

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