A Tribute to Sven-Göran Eriksson: A Lifetime of Emotions and Football Dreams

Even though he knew how to keep his calm as well as anyone on the sidelines, Sven-Göran Eriksson has always been a man to live and, when he feels the need, to fully express his emotions. But self-pity is not one of them. After he suffered a fall at the end of winter 2023, his children took him to the hospital where a day of tests revealed that the cause of the fall was a mild stroke including he should have no trouble recovering.

But doctors had found something else: pancreatic cancer. Inoperable. Eriksson only had a little over a year to live, at best. The care he would receive would only bring him a measure of comfort, without being able to delay the inevitable. Eriksson’s reaction to this terrible verdict did not surprise those who knew him.

“When you get a message like that,” he told the BBC, “you enjoy every day, and you’re happy when you wake up in the morning and you feel OK. That’s what I do.”

Anfield filled, Anfield moved

However, of all the days he has left, none can compare for him to March 23, when his lifelong football dream came true. For one match, with the blessing of Jürgen Klopp, Sven-Göran Eriksson was the manager of Liverpool, the club he had secretly supported since his childhood. It was just a gala match between two ‘legendary’ teams from the Reds and Ajax, but it was obviously something else than that.

A packed Anfield stood up to pay tribute, and the Swede was not the only one to be moved to tears. There are definitely things that Liverpool do better than any other club, the paradox being that no other English city attaches less emotional importance to the Three Lions than that of Merseyside. Unless it was also a way of reminding the rest of the country that Sven-Göran Eriksson deserved better than the way his media, in particular, had treated him almost throughout his five years at the head of the national team, from 2001 to 2006.

Sven-Göran Eriksson, moved to tears during the charity match at Anfield on March 23, 2024

Credit: Getty Images

England had a lot to be forgiven for in this regard, not that Eriksson held it any harsher than that. No foreigner had held the position of coach of the England team before him, and his appointment had stung the pride of this section (then the thickest) of English football torn between the conviction of its intrinsic superiority and the rage to see this conviction being undermined in almost all the international competitions in which its representatives took part.

England saw itself as too beautiful

To make matters worse, the FA had given the Swede a golden bridge to leave Lazio. How many coaches received an annual salary of more than three and a half million euros in 2001? None. And how many English coaches were paid that much by their clubs? Not the least. But no English manager could compare his record to that of ‘Svennis’, champion of Portugal and Italy, winner of seven national cups in three different countries, a UEFA Cup with Gothenburg and a European Cup. Cups with Lazio. Although Eriksson was a sincere lover of English football, he knew its value in the market and was not going to sell himself short, which further enraged his critics in the media.

Everything about him enraged them. That he speaks almost perfect English, more correct, in fact, than that of his predecessors, at least from the point of view of grammar. The imperturbable way in which he welcomed the ‘revelations’ about his private life that the tabloids were arguing about, and about which he seemed to care nothing. His composure without his technical area, his “lack of passion” in which some – including Gareth Southgate – saw the reason for England’s defeat against Brazil in their quarter-final of the 2002 World Cup. As if stamping on the bench could have prevented Ronaldinho’s cross-shot from deceiving David Seaman in the heat of Shizuoka.

The distress of David, Beckham and Seaman, after England’s defeat in the quarter-finals (2-1) against Brazil

Credit: AFP

England then saw itself much more beautiful than it was. England had a short memory. She quickly forgot the pitiful state Eriksson had found her in after Kevin Keegan’s resignation. All it took was a 5-1 victory over Germany in Munich on September 1, 2001, then a last-minute qualification for the World Cup, thanks to David Beckham’s right foot. On the strength of these small miracles, a few encouraging results – nothing more – from Premier League clubs in Europe, Michael Owen’s Ballon d’Or, and the expected maturation of a supposed Golden Generation, England approached the three major international meetings in 2002, 2004 and 2006 in the shoes of ‘favorites’ – in the eyes of its media and its supporters.

Eternal locker room affection

And in each of these tournaments, it stopped at the quarter-final stage, two times out of three after a penalty shootout. In other words, she finished in her place, which was not dishonorable, especially since she had never been able to approach these competitions with a Wayne Rooney in full possession of his means.

Sven-Goran Eriksson and Wayne Rooney before the 2006 World Cup

Credit: Getty Images

Eriksson was able to unite a locker room once torn apart by inter-club rivalries, whose players sat on separate tables depending on whether they played for Chelsea, Liverpool or Manchester United. These players had learned to respect him, to appreciate him, to even love him, to the point that they threatened to strike in July 2004, when a cabal orchestrated by the so-called ‘popular’ press threatened to bring him down. You only had to listen to the messages of support sent by many of Sven’s ‘old hands’, like Joe Cole and Owen Hargreaves, during the Anfield match to realize that the passage of years had not diminished. this affection.

So England wasn’t just paying tribute to Sven-Göran Eriksson with Liverpool’s gesture; she also apologized to him, while he did what he had always done, live in the present.

Does England see itself as too beautiful?

2024-03-28 23:12:00
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