Eriksson’s England era became a celebrity circus – but he wanted to enjoy life and was never bitter

Sven-Göran Eriksson doubted so much whether England could ever have a foreign manager that he considered an initial approach a joke. 

Intrigued eventually by the ground-breaking opportunity, rather than being deterred by the indignation, the Swede would launch the Three Lions into five of the most frenzied years in their history.

Everything belied his suave demeanour – from allowing a celebrity culture to consume the team to being an unlikely headline-making lothario himself and, even, showing passion while delivering results for his adopted country.

It was a blessing and burden to inherit a Golden Generation of talent of David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and co – captivating the country with dazzling one-off displays but unable to deliver when it mattered most under the weight of expectation and pressure.

It is the failure to overcome the constant quarter-final barrier and lift a trophy that shaped Eriksson’s England legacy where football too often seemed secondary.

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But the Eriksson era did provide a mirror to the nation at the start of the new millennium.

How the public’s ravenous appetite to gaze into the private lives of the stars – and the legalities of intrusive tabloid reporting – was stretched to extremes, and only unearthed years later.

How patriotism could seem parochial or xenophobic – just as the Premier League was the platform for England opening up to the world.

For a coach arriving after league and cup wins with Lazio, it proved perplexing that his suitability focused on his nationality over coaching credentials.

“We’ve sold our birthright down the fjord to a nation of seven million skiers and hammer throwers who spend half their lives in darkness.”

The Daily Mail headline set the tone for his introductory news conference.

He did try to sing God Save The Queen, feeling emotional as he realised the national standing he quickly assumed from 2001.

And doubters – some at least – were won over spectacularly on the turf of England’s greatest rival.

A 5-1 humiliation of Germany in Munich was followed a month later by another iconic moment of Eriksson’s reign – Beckham’s free kick that sealed a spot at the 2002 World Cup.

But the highs came in qualifying, falling short – always at the quarter-finals stage – in his three tournaments.

Too often it seemed more about fame than football around this England generation.

The high – or low – point of that came at his second and final World Cup in 2006.

As if managing Beckham, Rooney, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard wasn’t challenging enough, this was the era of the WAGs.

The celebrity circus around the Baden-Baden team base in Germany saw the players’ wives and girlfriends indulging in the media attention.

The insatiable appetite for a trophy matched the front page fodder the team – and their manager – provided.

Eriksson wanted to enjoy life but his privacy was exploited by the dark arts of tabloids.

Intimate details of affairs that the papers had a role in playing matchmaker to.

“I met Ulrika Jonsson on 8 December 2001, at some party hosted by the Daily Express, or maybe it was the Daily Star,” he recalled.

“The FA wanted me to travel around to various newspapers to be courteous and meet the editors. I visited the News Of The World too.”

It was the paper – closed in scandal by Rupert Murdoch in 2011 – he would blame for ending his England reign.

The notorious ‘fake sheikh’ had been used to trap him in a fictitious approach by Aston Villa ahead of the 2006 World Cup.

“I was extremely disappointed because I was sacked because of that,” Eriksson said. “I never accepted or understood that the News Of The World is so important… because I told the people at the FA – you believe in them or me.”

Who he could believe and trust was called into question by what he only later discovered was phone hacking.

Voicemail interceptions were linked to being behind the Daily Mirror’s revelation of his relationship with TV presenter Jonsson – another Swede who made it big in Britain.

“I think the football media was rather good. Sometimes they tried to kill me,” he said. “The other part of the media, that was a little bit of a surprise for me, because I wasn’t used to that.”

But he was never bitter – returning to English football to manage Manchester City just before the influx of Abu Dhabi wealth, dropping into the fourth division during a bizarre, brief spell as Notts County’s director of football and taking on a second-tier job at Leicester.

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The breadth of managerial roles after England – at three Chinese clubs, and the Mexico, Ivory Coast and Philippines national teams – showed Eriksson was happiest in the dugout.

“As a player I was not good at all,” he recalled. “I was not good enough to play first division in Sweden well, so the best decision I ever took in my professional career was when Tord Grip came to me and said, ‘It’s better you stop playing and be my assistant coach.’

“And that was when I was 27. So I had much better luck as a coach than a player for sure.”

The affection following Eriksson revealing his cancer diagnosis in January 2024 even allowed an emotional farewell to English football at Anfield by fulfilling a wish to manage Liverpool, as revealed on Sky News.

And assessments of his England reign seem more dispassionate as the trophy drought has gone on.

His immediate successor – Steve McClaren – didn’t qualify for Euro 2008 – and it took 12 years for an England men’s manager to win a knockout game.

But in his dying days, Eriksson was still thinking back to the 2006 World Cup.

“We should have done better,” he said. “So the criticism I and the team took after that tournament I think was fair.”

But what he could still never accept was why some questioned his right to ever have the job.

And while breaking new ground by becoming England’s first foreign manager, the nationality debate endures whenever an FA appointment is needed.

“There were people who did not like I was not English,” he lamented in retirement.