During one Downing Street reception in the Tony Blair years, the then-prime minister offered the then-England football manager a wager. ‘Shall we take a bet?’ Mr Blair asked Sven-Goran Eriksson. ‘Who keeps the job longest? You or me? We have two impossible jobs.’
As it happened, Mr Blair won that one (by a year) but he wasn’t wrong about the job. On the pitch, Eriksson came up with the same problem which has bedevilled every England manager since 1966: an irreconcilable imbalance between popular expectation and results.
Shortly before his death at the age of 76 yesterday, following an eight-month battle with pancreatic cancer, he warned that the next occupant of that position – following the resignation of Gareth Southgate – would face the same eternal challenge.
Study any league of past England managers and Eriksson is clearly in the upper echelons, though not at the top; a Spurs or a West Ham perhaps but not a Manchester City or Liverpool. He lasted a respectable five years in the job, took his side to three respectable quarter-finals in major tournaments, and had one or two cracking results, notably a 5-1 win against Germany in Germany in 2001.
Sven with ex wife Anki and son Johan
What singles out the urbane, softly-spoken Swede in the annals of the English game is what he did off the pitch.
The first non-Brit to take on the job, he presided over a complete makeover of soccer culture in the UK and, in particular, England. Furthermore, he had a private life which, for a while, eclipsed even the Royal Family or Hollywood when it came to lurid front-page headlines and tabloid intrigue.
I t was on Eriksson’s watch that an entirely new football phenomenon was born: the ‘Wag’. Footballers’ spouses and partners had never been part of the travelling entourage at the big tournaments.
Then along came Eriksson, a divorced father of two, with his own larger-than-life partner, a sequin-loving Italian divorcee, lawyer and socialite called Nancy dell’Olio, who would spearhead separate programmes for England’s ‘wives and girlfriends’.
In 2002, the acronym ‘Wag’ first appeared in a newspaper report and has been entertaining us ever since. Come the 2006 World Cup in Germany, the escapades of the Wags in the spa town of Baden-Baden attracted more attention than the sporting prowess (or lack of it) among their husbands and boyfriends.
Nancy Dell’Olio outside Downing Street in 2006
However, no player or partner generated anything like the media circus surrounding Eriksson himself after it transpired that he was having affairs with TV presenter and fellow-Swede Ulrika Jonsson as well as a Football Association secretary called Faria Alam. Ultimately, it was injudicious remarks to what he believed to be a Middle Eastern businessman – but was actually a media sting by the now-defunct News of the World – which brought his tenure in the England dugout to a close after the 2006 World Cup.
England had been the highlight of his career, unmatched by the series of mediocre jobs which followed. Yet he was not a bitter man. As viewers of a new documentary made shortly before his death will see, he remained as philosophical and unflappable as ever, right until the end.
‘Whoever it was who said “life is too short” is right. I had a good life, maybe too good,’ he reflected. ‘You have to pay for it. We all are scared of the day when it’s finished, when you die. You have to learn to accept it for what it is.’
The son of a bus conductor and shopworker, Eriksson was born in February 1948 and raised in the Varmland region of Sweden. Unlike the standard career path of other England managers, he combined playing Swedish lower league football while attending both high school and university.
Diplomas in economics and sports science followed, though a serious professional footballing career did not. By 27, he had accepted that he was not going to be a success on the pitch. However, his analytical brain and studious tactical approach made him excellent coach material.
Rising through the Swedish leagues, he led Goteborg to a clean sweep of all the main national trophies. Greater still was winning the Uefa Cup in 1982. His career path was already proving very similar to that of a certain Alex Ferguson.
Fellow Swede and TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson had been introduced to Eriksson at a party by Blairite spin doctor Alastair Campbell
In 1994, his marriage to Anki, whom he had met while in school, foundered. Tired of life in Italy with two young children – he would go on to manage several top Italian clubs including Roma and Lazio – she had asked him to choose between family and football. It was no contest.
‘Anki’s and my relationship had deteriorated and I had discovered that there were other women in this world, and that some of them even seemed interested in Mr Eriksson,’ he wrote in his 2013 autobiography, My Story.
Over in England, the national game was going through a major upheaval, driven in part by the ‘Cool Britannia’ ethos sweeping through the political and media establishments. In 2000, the Football Association had just appointed a new chief executive, Adam Crozier, plucked from the world of advertising and marketing (not football) and fluent in the jargon of modernisation.
One decision was to move the FA out of its elderly London headquarters at Lancaster Gate and into ‘cool’ new premises in chi-chi Soho. The old guard, known dismissively as the ‘blazers’, would be replaced by a younger executive breed, closely allied to the Blairite cadre now making up the new establishment.
Another transformative move was to break the old convention that the England manager had to be home-grown. Eriksson was hired from Lazio and his reign began with a string of encouraging results, notably that 5-1 qualifier over Germany.
The following year, he was making very different headlines when it emerged that he had been having an affair with Ulrika Jonsson. They had been introduced at a party by Blairite spin doctor Alastair Campbell and Eriksson pursued her by phone, even while on holiday with his partner.
It was revealed that Eriksson had been having another affair, with Faria Alam, a secretary at the FA
‘I was single at the time and 34. He was 54 and confided that he wanted to end his relationship with Nancy Dell’Olio because it was sapping him of energy,’ Miss Jonsson wrote many years later. ‘He then proceeded to call me every day when he went on holiday with Nancy, telling me I was beautiful. This was no great passionate affair. It was devoid of passion. He had all this power and money, yet he was the weakest man I have ever met.’
Every detail of the short-lived affair was front-page news, not least the Jonsson nanny’s revelation that Eriksson had left his stack-heeled shoes outside her bedroom door by way of a ‘do not disturb’ sign (though Ulrika later insisted it was just Swedish good manners).
The formidable Nancy initially dismissed the story as ‘a publicity attempt’ by Ulrika. After a modest separation from Eriksson, she took him back. ‘At home, things got a little rocky. Nancy tried to keep up appearances,’ he wrote in his memoir.
‘There was never any talk about her leaving me. Instead, she had got it into her head that nothing had happened between Ulrika and me. Nancy and I went out to a restaurant, San Lorenzo, to eat, as if nothing had happened.
‘During the dinner, the whole street outside was filled with paparazzi. There were those who believed I should have publicly apologised to Nancy. But it was none of these people’s business. I did not feel as if I had anything to apologise for.’
In his valedictory film, he said much the same about the Ulrika affair: ‘Sex is one of the good things in life for all of us. She was not married. I was not married. Probably I was stupid but I think I didn’t do anything criminal. I didn’t disturb anyone.’ As for Nancy, he even suggested that she enjoyed the drama. ‘She loved it. The tension. She was a lady from the upper classes in Rome. She liked to go out with important people.’ For her part, Ms Dell’Olio recalled: ‘We were Sven and Nancy since the first date. I was the first lady of English football.’
Ms Dell’Olio and Sven
For the last 15 years of his life, Sven’s partner was Yaniseth Alcides, a former dancer from Central America
Two years later, it was revealed that Eriksson had been having another affair, with Faria Alam, a secretary at the FA, who had also been having an affair with the FA’s chief executive, Mark Palios.
Further details spilled out after Ms Alam sold her story for a six-figure sum, prior to an appearance on the 2006 edition of Celebrity Big Brother.
Palios lost his job but Eriksson survived and bore her no ill-will. ‘Faria had been hung out to dry in the Press and lost her job, so why not make some money off the whole ordeal?
‘What made me sad was that it was definitely over between us. I liked Faria a lot. I think love had even blossomed,’ he wrote in his autobiography.
‘I felt no remorse towards Nancy. She lived in my house, but we were not married and I did not love her. People could say whatever they wanted. I did not regret anything.’
Once again, Nancy agreed to a reconciliation, although by now, the relationship was wearing thin. The following year, without telling her, Eriksson bought a London flat ‘where I could be by myself.’ He had done the same thing in Rome, he admitted in his memoirs.
In 2006, a set-up by the News of the World’s ‘fake sheikh’ reporter, Mazher Mahmood, produced more embarrassment. In it, Eriksson had said that he was willing to become manager of Aston Villa for £5million-a-year and to prise David Beckham away from Real Madrid.
There were also assorted embarrassing throwaway lines about numerous football luminaries. It was a scandal too far for the FA’s latest chief executive Brian Barwick who told Eriksson: ‘I want to finish the story here and now’. It was agreed Eriksson would stay in post until after the 2006 World Cup and then move on.
Further jobs would yield mixed results, from the Mexican national team and table-topping Manchester City to lowly Notts County, plus stints in Thailand and the Philippines.
The relationship with Nancy would survive one more year, though she was still living in one of his apartments many years later. She would also go on to appear in Celebrity Big Brother and Strictly Come Dancing.
What Eriksson resented above all during these tempestuous years was the inference that he was motivated by either money or sex when the driving force in his life had always been football and football alone. For the last 15 years of his life, Sven’s partner was Yaniseth Alcides, a former dancer from Central America.
‘Hopefully, at the end people will say, “He was a good man”.
‘I hope you will remember me as a positive guy,’ he said in his last interview. ‘Don’t be sorry, smile.’
For all the dramas, there was certainly plenty to smile about.