it could have been so much more.
Yes, I’ll say it’s sad news of passing of former England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson and man who started with a bang and ended with a whimper.
I know, the amount of posts on here during the Svennis era – even calling him Svennis – he may have been a disappointment as England manager but he seemed like a fun type.
And a fairly successful manager, before his head was turned by the money the F.A. were to throw at him to replace Keggie Keegle. Eight spells at seven different clubs in Sweden, Portugal and Italy, saw him win a few domestic cups with five of the teams, league titles in all three countries, along with a few European finals and two European trophies, one with Gothenburg the other with Lazio.
Then he became England’s first foreign manager. Which wasn’t a bad thing considering what we’d just had and what was available. After Keggie’s chaos of “up an’ at ’em”. Sven’s cold tactical brain seemed the perfect antidote.
An it started so well, 3-0 over Spain in a friendly, won his first five games. The first loss, a friendly to the Dutch was followed by that game. Unfortunately that game was the peak. “Five one… even Heskey scored!”.
Let’s not forget that while Keggie’s tenure ended in the Wembley toilet after losing to Germany, he’d beaten them previously in the Euros. One of the worst German teams you’ve seen at that point., they weren’t much better when England lost that qualifier, nor much better when losing for only the second time at home in a qualifier. It kept England in the hunt to qualify for the WC in Korea and Japan. Beating Albania shortly after meant they just had to match the German’s result in the final match to top the group.
It took that last second Beckham free-kick to get the draw required, as the Germans had also draw. But while England kept celebrating that game as they went straight through to the finals, German had a play off game to contend with – though they’d scheduled friendlies for that date as they expected to win that Munich game – England would go out meekly in the quarter finals and the Germans would reach the final.
And that was Sven’s era with the “Golden Generation”. Meek quarter final exits.
2002 to Brazil thanks to Beckham pulling out of a tackle that led to the equaliser and then Seaman’s positioning for the winning free-kick. The Euros in ’04 saw them go out on penalties to Portugal, something they repeated at the next World Cup.
He was at this time England’s second most successful manager after Sir Alf. And there’s a lot of parallels with the manager who took that second place from him. Southgate.
It is hugely ironic that about the half time team talk in the ’02 quarter final with Brazil it was Gareth Southgate who said “We needed Churchill but we got Iain Duncan-Smith”. When Southgate would Duncan-Smith so many half-times and games. Many in the manner of Sven.
Like under Southgate, England’s tournament exits usually started with England taking the lead, a lead they could never hold. Like Southgate, Sven’s teams weren’t teams rather a collection of the star players and the manager’s favourites. Like Southgate he had the best collection of players that anyone had had before. Unlike Southgate there were far more better teams around, that England had to get by. I mean, just look at that German side, not much different from the current one. But back then they could be crap and still get to a final, where now they’re the ones meekly going out in the quarters.
Maybe that’s it. The current German side is the England of the Sven, while Southgate’s England are the Germans.
So unlike BBC guy Phil McNulty I won’t write a glowing tribute after slagging him off. No revisionism. There were high points but it was a failed experiment as McNulty said at the time.
Post England was a bit of a write off for Sven. Though I imagine it was a very lucrative one for him – always seemed one for a bit of cash – and opened up new places to mix with more female company – another thing that seemed prominent on his radar. I can’t imagine he had sleepless nights over not getting the big gig anymore. He also seemed to take his death sentence with good humour and honour.