The beginning of the end for me as England team manager was when my agent, Athole Still, and his attorney, Richard Des Voeux, received an inquiry.
The idea was for the three of us to fly to Dubai to meet with a sheik who was presented as vice-chairman of the National Football Federation there.
It was a matter of developing football in the United Arab Emirates, and some kind of football school. That’s how it was first presented.
I would serve as an adviser. We landed at the airport. No passports were necessary, as we were picked up in a limousine that stood waiting right outside the plane.
We were there for two days, and I lived in a suite at the seven-star luxury hotel Burj Al Arab. The suite was huge, I’d never seen anything like it — as large as my whole house in Sweden.
Sven Goran Eriksson managed England for five years between 2001 and 2006 and led the team to three major championship quarter-finals
The Swede was let go by the FA after a scandal involving a fake sheik grabbed headlines in early 2006
We had dinner with the sheik and his entourage and didn’t talk at all about what I thought the subject of conversation would be. Instead, they offered me a coaching job with a club that they hadn’t yet purchased.
They would also double whatever I earned as England team manager.
I declined the offer, no matter how much money they were planning to dump on the table. I was team manager for England. This was in early 2006, and it was six months before the World Cup.
They wondered if I would be interested in training Aston Villa. They also planned to buy that club, they said. But they expressed themselves extremely oddly, and one silly thing after another kept popping up in our conversation.
‘If we fail miserably in the World Cup, we can talk about this. I would probably be fired then,’ I concluded.
The next day we were taken on a boat trip for some lazy hours in the sun. But when the boat returned to the marina, the sheik and his limousine had vanished, and the planned evening meeting had been cancelled.
The whole business was strange, and the disappearing sheik seemed to be an enigma. Until the resolution came in the form of scandalous headlines: ‘Sven’s Dirty Deals!’, ‘Sven: The Tapes’.
The News of the World had rigged up the whole show. They had paid for and directed the trip to fashion a lie.
The resolution to the off meeting came in the form of scandalous headlines: ‘Sven’s Dirty Deals!’, ‘Sven: The Tapes’
Brian Barwick (left), the FA chief called Sven into his office and informed him that the upcoming World Cup would be his last as Three Lions boss
The articles maintained that I could imagine leaving my job as team manager to take over Villa, and for big money — Jose Mourinho-size oil money — for my salary.
When this business with the fake sheik came out, Brian Barwick, the FA chief executive, had had enough. He called me up to his office and said that the News of the World ran Britain, not the Government.
‘I didn’t know that the News of the World was in charge of the FA as well,’ I replied. I made it perfectly clear that what they had written was a pack of lies. ‘I don’t give a damn,’ said Barwick. ‘I like to sleep in on Sunday mornings. I don’t want to sit for hours talking to the press about fake sheiks and the devil and his maternal aunt. After the World Cup, we’re done.’
We really thought we would reach the final of the 2006 World Cup. That’s how good the England team were — should have made the final. I’m proud of what I did and proud of the team. We thought, and I still think today, that no other team was better than we were. And, as a matter of fact, Italy, who won the gold, weren’t especially good either.
What could I say in the dressing room after our loss to Portugal? It was my final match. Normally you can say: ‘Shake it off, lads. We’ll get them next time.’ But we all knew that there wouldn’t be a next time for me. There was a strange mood in the room.
The next day, before we boarded the bus to the airport to fly home to London, the new team manager gathered the whole staff. There were a lot of people there.
‘A new epoch is starting today,’ he said to everybody. ‘And so I wish to thank you, Sven. I promise that you’ll be invited, two years from now, to the final in the 2008 European Championship. You’ll have a place of honour.’
England crashed out of the tournament on penalties in the quarter-final stages after losing to Portugal
That was Steve McClaren’s way of saying: ‘I’m taking over now, and things will be better.’ It was churlish of him, but that’s what he said.
Everybody reacted, including the players. Tord Grip always said about McClaren: ‘What the hell, fire him.’ Tord is a good judge of character.
Some players just sat there, crying. On the flight home as well. It was not exactly a jovial ride. I know that Rio Ferdinand has said that the flight home was turbulent in many ways, that the plane was shaking and lurching, but I have no such memory. I do recall, however, that there was no singing, laughter, or joy.
When we landed, the place was crawling with journalists, but it was simply a matter of keeping a stiff upper lip. After all, I had been fired several months before the World Cup, because of the bluffing sheik.
It wasn’t the best way to go, but in spite of the way it ended, English fans have always been incredibly friendly.
I’ve never heard an unkind word about me, not at any of the many arenas I’ve been to. Throughout my coaching career, I have always dreamed of coaching an even better team.
I have always been prepared to aim as high as possible, a challenge that has followed me throughout my career. All the way to the English national team, which was the biggest, the highest.
But a national team is different from a club, there are longer gaps between matches and the major championships. I had left incredible popularity in Rome with Lazio’s successes and ended up in England with everything that entailed. And, England is England…
Eriksson’s assistant manager Steve McClaren was named as his successor but his tenure turned out to be a disaster
The reasons I couldn’t turn down the Three Lions job
When I was coaching Lazio, my agent Athole Still called and jumped right to the heart of the matter: ‘Are you interested in taking over England?’
He was the one who then brokered the deal with the FA, and I’m certain he received good compensation. It should also be added that without FA boss Adam Crozier, I would never have been given the job — as England’s first-ever foreign national team manager.
The Scotsman was a businessman, a competitive lion, only 35 years old. He made his argument clear to the conservative forces in the FA that he wanted the best person for the job, regardless of nationality.
When Athole came with his question, I had no doubt in my mind. My generation in Sweden had grown up with English football.
I would sit there glued to the screen, regardless of what crappy matches were being played on awful, muddy, winter pitches. English football was what I was raised on, my school, and now I was suddenly going to be the national team manager.
As soon as I arrived in England, I started taking private lessons in English. The main thing was to learn all the football terms, but I soon discovered that you can’t study your way to mastery of some things.
Players like Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerrard, and Wayne Rooney — I never understood what they were saying. They spoke Scouse, the Liverpool dialect, a hotchpotch of Irish, Welsh, and the Lancashire dialect. ‘Damn it, if you want to talk to me, you have to speak English,’ I told them.
But Wayne Rooney just laughed at me. I did grow into my English, of course, but you are always a bit handicapped if you don’t have full command of the language.
Eriksson, pictured alongside former Man City manager Roberto Mancini, left his role as Lazio boss to take over the Three Lions in 2001
The day Rooney saw red
We lost in the 2006 World Cup quarter-final against Portugal on penalties. Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, and Jamie Carragher missed their kicks. But it was Wayne Rooney who became the big scapegoat.
He got a red card in the 61st minute with the score 0-0. His team-mate from Manchester United, Cristiano Ronaldo, went around bugging Rooney the whole time, and finally, in a messy situation, Rooney put his foot down on the crotch of Ricardo Carvalho.
Rooney maintained afterwards that the decision was a mistake, and he was disappointed that Ronaldo had rushed up to the referee and tried to persuade him just before the red card was shown.
It seemed a clear and intended provocation from Ronaldo, knowing the temperament of Rooney, but these provocations happen and it’s part of the game.
At the press conference after the match, I asked for the floor and directly addressed the journalists. ‘Don’t slaughter Rooney,’ I said. ‘He’s young and inexperienced. And you’re going to need him in future.’
I suggested that they sacrifice me instead. ‘You won’t be needing me.’ Everyone knew that Wayne Rooney was easy to rile up. He was young and irascible, and he had great self-confidence. He believed he was already a world champion when he was 17.
Wayne Rooney saw red in England’s defeat by Portugal after stamping on Chelsea defender Ricardo Carvalho
Rooney was incensed that his then Manchester United team-mate Cristiano Ronaldo petitioned the referee for his dismissal
Wayne was super intelligent on the pitch, even though he might not have had that intelligence with him off the pitch.
Much later, he and I were both involved in a charity match at the Etihad Stadium. Besides Wayne, the players included a number of legends such as Gary Neville, Paul Scholes, and Roberto Carlos, but also a number of female players, stars from other sports, and artists.
It wasn’t much of a football match, which bothered Wayne no end. At the break he belted out in the changing room: ‘Damn it, we’ve got to hold on to the ball! We can’t give up the ball, because then we have to run ourselves to death.’
I didn’t say anything, but I reflected that he hadn’t learned a thing. The spectators had come to see the rappers and pop stars just as much as the football players. Nobody really cared. But the inveterate victory-minded Wayne Rooney was unable to take the match for what it was.
At the same time, that is the same mindset that made him England’s best goalscorer ever.
ABBA legends to write England World Cup song
England fans could have cheered on the World Cup squad in 2002 with a rousing anthem from the superstars of ABBA – had Sven-Goran Eriksson got his way.
The former manager had a dream that his Swedish countrymen would compose and perform a hit to rally the team at the tournament, he has posthumously revealed.
But although the band’s Benny Andersson said ‘I do, I do, I do, I do, I do’ to the idea, Eriksson’s bosses at the FA refused to take a chance on the plan, vetoing it on the grounds – ironically enough – that ABBA’s members were not English.
Eriksson – who died of pancreatic cancer in August at the age of 76 – revealed the plan in his soon-to-be published autobiography, A Beautiful Game.
It came about after David Beckham led England to an historic 5-1 away win in Germany in September 2001, putting the team on course for the finals in Japan and South Korea the following year.
Showing tactical nous sometimes lacking in his teams, Eriksson then asked his long-term ally and assistant England coach Tord Grip to approach ABBA star Andersson about writing an anthem, possibly with his bandmate Bjorn Ulvaeus.
Sven-Goran Eriksson asked ABBA’s Benny, right, to pen an anthem – and he agreed
Eriksson wrote: ‘I didn’t have anything to do with the song, but it gave the accordion-playing Tord Grip the idea to get his friend Benny Andersson and the England team together and into the top ten. I said to Tord, “What if Abba wrote our song? You know him well. Call Benny!” And Benny bought in right away, “I’d be happy to, and I don’t need to be paid a huge sum. This is a great honour!”‘
But when a delighted Eriksson revealed his plan to the FA chairman at the time, Geoff Thompson, and the board, he met his Waterloo.
Writing in his memoirs, Eriksson explains they responded: ‘No, you can’t do that.’
He replied: ‘Why not? Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson have virtually never written a song that didn’t become a hit!’ He explains: ‘The answer was that Bjorn and Benny were not Englishmen. ‘Well, I’m not English either, but I work here,’ I sighed, exasperated.
‘I still don’t understand how they could say no to ABBA. The English have their principles, and this was clearly one of them.’
Eriksson’s side went out in the quarter-finals, losing 2-1 to Brazil – who went on to win the cup – after Ronaldinho lobbed goalkeeper David Seamen from distance for the winner.
Eriksson had a dream that his Swedish countrymen would compose and perform a hit to rally the team at the tournament
While ABBA have scored nine No 1 singles and 10 chart-topping albums in the UK, England’s hit song for 2002 was provided by TV presenters Ant and Dec.
Their track, We’re On The Ball – featuring such lyrics as ‘Sven’s the man, he’s got a plan’ – made No 3 in the charts. Not quite Winner Takes It All…
