The legacy of every England football manager "tends to hang on a single moment or personality trait that sticks in the popular imagination".
For Sven-Göran Eriksson, who died yesterday aged 76 after suffering from pancreatic cancer, "it's hard not to think of him as a professional seducer who stumbled into football management by mistake", said Michael Lee for PlanetFootball .
But while the tabloids were keen to play up his reputation as an unlikely lothario during his time in England, Eriksson also enjoyed a "hugely successful" managerial career, said the Daily Mail . He won 18 trophies over four decades coaching the likes of Benfica, Roma, Lazio, Sampdoria and Manchester City.
He is perhaps best remembered as the first foreign manager to take charge of the England men's team, and the so-called 'golden generation' of players in the early 2000s that included David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney.
Back then, 23 years ago, it was a "different environment when arguably his biggest task was convincing the nay-sayers as much as doing the job", said The Mirror 's chief football writer John Cross, "but then he quickly won over the England fans".
His stock phrase "First half good, second half not so good" entered the public consciousness and continues to be used to describe England's performances to this day. It perfectly "summed [up] England under Sven", said Cross: "halfway to being a really good football team".
While he couldn't translate the undoubted talent at his disposal into tournament success for England, he was still highly regarded in the UK and abroad, most notably in Italy. Having achieved a career high by guiding Lazio to the Serie A title in the 1990s, the Italian sports newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport hailed him as "the master of football".
He was also gracious in defeat, no more so than when he was facing the sack at Manchester City. "Even if you know you're going to be sacked," he said, "you still have to be professional until the end, and then I can say I have done my job and my work. That's important."
On life
Eriksson was never far away from the headlines during his time in England, where his private life was a "seemingly endless source of fascination for newspapers", said Indy100 . They ran stories on high-profile affairs with the likes of Nancy Dell'Olio and Ulrika Jonsson, labelling him an unlikely Swedish playboy, but that "never appeared to dampen his spirits and he always maintained a positive outlook on life".
One story that epitomises this comes from former Manchester City midfielder Dietmar Hamann's book "The Didi Man", and took place during a post-season tour of Thailand in 2008, just days before Eriksson was let go by the club.
"One morning I was on a sun lounger by the pool when I saw Sven walking towards me carrying a silver tray with a bottle of champagne and two glasses on it," Hamman wrote. "It was still only ten o'clock in the morning… Sven came over and put the champagne on the table next to me, then placed one glass in front of me and the other by his lounger.
"I looked up and said, 'Boss, what are we celebrating?'… He turned to me and smiled that gentle smile of his and took on the air of a Buddhist philosopher as he said, 'Life, Kaiser.' Then after pausing for dramatic effect, 'We are celebrating… life.'"
Eriksson deserves to be remembered as a "terrific" football manager, said Cross, but it is this "sense of fun, the twinkle in his eye, which really defines him as one of the game's greatest characters".
"Don't be sorry, smile" was Cross's favourite Eriksson quote "among many". "That sums him up. And it fits perfectly into today because, looking back on his life, he had an absolute blast."
On death
Eriksson revealed his cancer diagnosis to Swedish radio station P1 earlier this year, saying that while he most likely had less than 12 months to live, he was trying to maintain a positive mindset.
"You can trick your brain. See the positive in things, don't wallow in adversity, because this is the biggest adversity of course, but make something good out of it."
In an Amazon Prime documentary about his life released last week, Eriksson gave an emotional farewell to his fans with some final words of wisdom.
"I think we are all scared of the day when we die, but life is about death as well," he said. "You have to learn to accept it for what it is."
And he hoped people "will remember me as a positive guy trying to do everything he could do".
Most Popular
Comments / 0