Carl-Johan Sahlstrom waits at Oslo airport. A young man from Torsby in Sweden, he has been sent by a friend, Sven-Göran Eriksson, to pick up a passenger from London and take him to Eriksson's home. Sahlstrom runs his own business, plays football for the local team, but when Eriksson asks him to do something, he has time. He drives a Volvo station wagon, owned by Eriksson, and asks what English people now think about their former team manager. "It's complicated," I say, politely. Sahlstrom wants me to see the house where Eriksson grew up. Torsby is a small provincial town surrounded by pine forests. The houses are small but well kept, and symbols of social division, picked up so easily in British towns, are nowhere to be seen. He points to a small detached house across the road from the school.

"That used to be the Erikssons' house," he says, "the one just up there on the right, that's where my father was raised." Then he tells me why the Erikssons and the Sahlstroms have always been friends. "My father, Nenne, is younger than Sven, but they knew each other from when they were kids. Sven became a football manager, my dad became boss of Volvo in this region, and they remained good friends. My dad got Volvo to give Sven the use of a car. No money was involved, just the car. Then Sven became famous. When he became manager of England, he got a very good offer from Jaguar but he said no, he would not change. The head of Volvo in Sweden wrote my father a personal letter of thanks and the company sent my parents on a fantastic trip to London - all because Sven remained loyal to my father."

Eriksson lives on the eastern shores of Lake Fryken. He bought the 350-year-old house six or seven years ago, an event Sahlstrom recalls with fondness. "There is a very famous passenger steamer ship; it capsized in 1896 and lay at the bottom of Lake Fryken for 80 years. A diver found it in 1976; it was salvaged in 1994 and renovated. Sven hired the ship and invited his family and friends to spend the day on the lake. His parents were there, his children, my parents, my aunt and her husband, a few others. In the middle of the afternoon, he pointed to this house on the shore and said, 'That is the house I have just bought.'"

It is late in the afternoon when we arrive at Eriksson's home. He comes through the front door, offers a warm handshake, pleasant smile and is obviously nervous. Five-and-a-half years of dealing with England's media has left some scars.

He is, of course, groomed immaculately. Inside he has tea, coffee and Swedish pastries arranged on a trolley. At a table overlooking the lake, we talk, mostly about football and what he has been doing since that fateful Saturday afternoon in Germany last July when England exited the World Cup and he left our lives. Eight months doing what? Well, he has travelled a lot. Dubai, Qatar, Italy, London many times, and what is clear is that he has been at a loose end. Without a job, he feels restless and alone. For a man with the means to do as he wishes, it is surprising that he pines for the one opportunity that has been temporarily taken away. "Before England, I had never been sacked in my life. I have done a lot of things over the past few months, but I want to have a job. I don't sit here pining about it, but I loved being a manager and I am still young enough to do the job. I'd prefer to be in football than to have a holiday." He has watched endless matches on TV. One evening he saw David Beckham sitting in the stand at the Bernabeu stadium watching a Real Madrid game, and he called his old captain to cheer him up. They have spoken twice in eight months. Everyone moves on in football, he says; new managers mean new loyalties, and he prefers it like that.

We walk through his garden to the lake shore, and he shows me his modest boat. It resembles an oversized raft with a little engine. On the deck, there is nothing but two tables and a barbecue. When the weather is right, he and his friends take the boat out on the lake and get the barbecue going. He looks remarkably fit, even slimmer than he was during his England years. He points to the nearby house he bought for his parents, Sven and Ulla, so when he comes to stay by the lake, they can move from their place in Torsby to be close. Though he enjoys football's wealth, he is fearful that people will look at the trappings of his success and misunderstand him. "My father was 19 when I was born, and for the first two years of my life, he, my mother and I lived in one room of a house we shared with four other families. All five families used the same bathroom. My father drove a lorry; my mother sold newspapers from a kiosk and later worked as a nurse's aid in a hospital." He says nobody in Sweden would call him "Sven-Göran Eriksson" because "Sven-Göran" is too formal. He recalls his best friend from childhood, who first called him "Svennis", and afterwards he was only known as Svennis. Until he got to England and Svennis died, replaced by Sven-Göran Eriksson. He talks about this mix-up as if, perhaps, it is the explanation for 51/2 years of misunderstanding. As if he couldn't be his real self in England. As if, maybe, we never truly got to know him.

The next day, Sven and Ulla come to the hotel in the Volvo to take me back to the house. They speak little English, but effortlessly express their decency. Though both in their eighties, they are sprightly, and Ulla uses every word of English she has to make conversation. Their pride in the achievements of their 59-year-old son is evident in the deference shown to the visitor. Later, Sven will say he likes to call them every day wherever he is. There is another trayful of coffee and Swedish pastries, and he is ready to speak about his years among the English. He hasn't watched a replay of his last match in charge and that dreadful penalty shoot-out against Portugal. "We practised penalties almost every day at the end of our training sessions. Eight or nine players taking them, watching who was consistent: Owen Hargreaves was maybe the most consistent. And Jamie Carragher was so good, we changed our list of takers to include him. You can never be sure about penalties, but I never imagined we'd take them as badly as we did. It wasn't tiredness, it was nerves. Taking a penalty for England at the World Cup is not like taking a penalty in the Premier League. The pressure on the Portuguese players was not even close to what the England players felt."

The emotional devastation in the England dressing room remains his most vivid memory. He had thought about what he would say to the players, and realised there was nothing he could say. "The World Cup was over, for the team and me. It was my last game and, though I was standing there in front of them, I was no longer the manager. Everyone was sitting with their own thoughts, heads in their hands. There were a lot of tears. No one was saying a word. What was so crushing for me, and for the players, was knowing we were a better team than Portugal and knowing we'd lost a golden opportunity to do something at the World Cup. What made it hard was understanding there'd be no other training session, no other tournament. In the end I just said, 'Thanks for the 51/2 years.' "

He went to his last post-match press conference with one idea in his mind. "I asked the press, 'Please don't kill Rooney [Wayne Rooney, who had been sent off an hour before the end of the game] and don't kill those players who missed penalties. Don't kill them, because you will need them in the future. You can kill me, because you don't need me any more.' And I think they did kill me. Things happen in football that can't be undone."

From there, he found it difficult. He travelled home with the team but was no longer part of the team. Sitting in his usual place, wearing his England clothes, but no longer the boss. He sulked over the bad result and the unsatisfactory end to his time with England. He spent a day in London and then left for Sweden, where for two more weeks he continued to brood. All through his career, he had been unflappable. Before, during and after games, he stayed calm. He didn't get excited or despondent. Players liked him for that. "I was really charmed by him," said Ruud Gullit, who played under Eriksson at Sampdoria. "He was such a good man in the way he treated people, that it seemed rude not to do what he asked. He never had to raise his voice to anyone, and he would talk to you in a very civilised way." Post-World Cup, Eriksson lost that equanimity. "For the first few nights back in Sweden, I couldn't sleep and couldn't really stop thinking about what had happened. It wasn't like I was in a depression, but it was a recurring thought - 'Shit, shit, shit, shit.' Then at some point you realise you have to move on with your life; your children are coming to stay with you for their summer holidays, the weather is beautiful, and you just tell yourself, 'Enough.' But I couldn't talk about the World Cup and haven't spoken about it until now. We should have done better, I am absolutely convinced of that. I was convinced we would do well before the tournament and, even though we didn't play that well in the early games, we were improving and we were going to get better. Is it failure if we miss three out of four penalties? Is it failure to lose on penalties when you play 10 against 11 for the last hour?

"In the knockout stages of the World Cup, the differences between the teams are not so great that you can afford big mistakes. They will kill you. But you ask if I feel I have failed. I don't know. I don't feel I'm a failure for what I did with England. No, I don't feel that."

Asked about the midfielder Frank Lampard's criticisms that England should have taken another striker to the World Cup and that the team could have worked harder in Germany, Eriksson refuses to offer any criticism of a player who didn't exactly star at the tournament. He felt the strikers he left behind weren't playing well enough, and says the danger at big tournaments is too much, not too little, time on the training ground. "England's players want to go 100% all the time. Take a player like Rooney: getting him off the training pitch is very difficult. He wants to stay out after everyone has stopped and practise shooting. But the day before a game, you don't want him doing that. His desire is a positive thing, but at a World Cup, where you might play two games in a week, you don't want him doing that. An important difference between an England player and an Italian is Italian players will train in the morning, have lunch, then go to bed in the afternoon. England players find it hard to do that, to kill the time. As a result, they become bored sooner than an Italian player."

This is not an interview he wanted to do, but friends in London persuaded him. "Why?" he asked. So that English people could hear his side of the story, they told him. And get a sense of a man they hardly knew. How good was he? Is there a sense of humour? Does he realise how stupidly he managed his private life? How does he see us? I ask him about his life before he came to England, and he tells a story in a more interesting way than might be imagined. "You see my house - there's nothing that says I've been involved in football. As a manager, I have won 16 or 17 or 18 trophies, I don't know how many, but I don't like saying, 'Look how good I've been.' What's my life been like? I answer the question this way: I've never felt like I've worked. I've just been involved in football. I wasn't a very good player but knew I wanted to work in sport, and went to a good university to study sports science. While studying, I met Ann-Christin Petterson, who was training to be a teacher, and we got married in 1977. I coached at a small club, Degerfors. We had a little success in Sweden's third division, winning promotion to the second division. One day I arrived home and my wife said, 'A man from Gothenburg football club called.' 'That's a mistake,' I said. 'Gothenburg wouldn't want to speak with me.' They were the biggest team in Sweden and they wanted me to be their manager. I travelled to Gothenburg by train and they told me the club liked to play football 'à la champagne'. 'What is that?' I said. They had good players who needed organisation. ?At first the supporters did not like how we played. At one match, a big man who supported Gothenburg stood up in the crowd and screamed, 'Send the devil back ?to the woods!' He didn't think I was doing a good job.

"Things improved, and in my final season at Gothenburg we became the first Swedish team to win a European competition by taking the Uefa Cup. By then the team had become so strong they could have done it without a manager. We were a team of part-timers who beat Valencia in the ?semi-final, then Hamburg in the final. Our midfield player Tord Holmgren was a plumber, and he came to me the day before the first leg of the final, which was at home. 'Sven,' he said, 'will the club give me a half-day's pay if I take tomorrow off to prepare for the game?' We won that game 1-0; Tord scored the goal. For the second leg, I was talking in the dressing room before the game about their tall centre-forward Horst Hrubesch and telling our centre-half Glenn Hysen that he must watch him closely because Hrubesch was so strong in the air. Hysen said, 'Sven, for every time he beats me to the ball, I will buy you dinner.' We beat Hamburg 3-0 at their ground, Hrubesch never won a header, and I never got a dinner. Next year, 1983, Hamburg won the European Cup.

"I had it in my contract that if a big club from outside Sweden wanted me, I was free to accept, and in the summer of 1982 I became manager of Benfica. I went from Benfica to Roma, to Fiorentina, back to Benfica, to Sampdoria, then Lazio. I had a fantastic time and there are some extraordinary memories. In my second season at Roma, we should have won the Scudetto [Italian first-division championship], but in our second- last game we lost at home to Lecce, who were already relegated - a result I cannot explain. The next day, the prosecutor opened an investigation, and for five days I was with the police at the tribunal. They wanted to know if some of our players had sold the match. I had no idea. I still don't know. It should have been such an easy game for us. We lost 3-2, and Dino Viola, the Roma president, said to me, 'Sven, you mustn't think you've lost this league. Think that you've won it, but I can't give you the Ferrari I promised as a bonus for winning." (Two years later, Viola received a four-year ban from Uefa for attempting to bribe a referee.)

"Before I joined Sampdoria, I met the president, Paolo Mantovani, at a restaurant in Monte Carlo. The meeting went well, he wanted me to come to his club and I wanted to accept. Over dinner, Mantovani took a paper serviette and began writing on it, 'This is to say Sven Eriksson will become manager of Sampdoria for two years at an annual salary of 500m lira', and he pushed the serviette across the table to me for me to sign. I noticed how much he was agreeing to pay me. It was a very good salary, more than I'd have asked for. But I just wasn't sure I should sign a serviette, and I wondered if it would be better to have some advice before I did. So I looked at it and didn't do anything. Mantovani saw my hesitation, took back the serviette, crumpled it up and said, 'I see you are not satisfied with the salary.' He took another serviette and increased the salary by quite a bit, so I signed the second serviette.

"In 1994 my marriage ended, which I regarded as a personal defeat. Ann-Christin and I had been married for 17 years, known each other for 23 years, and we had two great children, Johan and Lina. Johan, who qualified in America as a sports psychologist and fitness trainer, is assistant manager of a football team in Africa, and Lina is in her first year of university in England. She is doing a course in Third World development - she has always been interested in this subject and has spent many holiday periods doing voluntary work in the Third World.

"After Sampdoria, I went to Lazio and had three very successful seasons there, winning the Italian Cup, the last European Cup Winners' Cup final, and the Scudetto. The president [Sergio Cragnotti] provided a lot of money and we signed good players. In the middle of my fourth season at Lazio, I got a call from a friend in England, Athole Still. 'Sven,' he said, 'would you be interested in becoming manager of England?' I thought it was impossible that I'd be offered the job, but was interested. I supported Liverpool as a boy in Sweden, my father is still a mad Liverpool fan, and I remember Arrigo Saachi, the great Italian coach, saying to me before he retired, 'The only job that would keep me going is England manager.' Adam Crozier and David Dein came to Rome, we spoke at a secret apartment, ordering in the food, and they offered me the job.

"Then Howard Wilkinson from the FA came to Rome to tell me more about English football. I said to him, 'Do you think being manager of England is a good job?' He said, 'Being England manager is a great job - if you live in Paris.'"

Eriksson has a routine for his half-time talk. He goes to the dressing room, speaks with his assistant, and lets the players talk for a few minutes before addressing them. In Portugal and Italy, he would not get the full attention of the players unless he first let them blow off some steam. At half-time in his first game for England, against Spain at Villa Park, he walked into the dressing room and waited for the chatter to die down. Except every player was waiting in utter silence for what he had to say. Eriksson wasn't used to that. His first impression was that he had taken over a group of serious, well-mannered professionals. Over time, impression became conviction and his belief in the honesty and work ethic of England's players never wavered. At that early point, the new manager had made the decision that would give his England team its character: David Beckham was his choice to be the team's voice and leader. Reflecting now on Beckham's captaincy, there is the vaguest hint of uncertainty in his voice. "He was the most famous English football player, especially outside of England, and I thought he did a very good job as captain." When Beckham was most needed - at the World Cup finals in Japan and Germany, at the Euro 2004 finals in Portugal - he didn't play his best. "He was still recovering from injury in Japan. His fitness wasn't right in Portugal - I think he'd done too much weights - but he did play well in all of the qualification games."

Eriksson's strengths as a manager are not difficult to pinpoint. He brings calm, tactical clarity and organisation to a team. Central to his style is the loyalty he shows to those he works with. He makes his choices and sticks with them. The key is to make the right choices. His best years in Italy were his last nine seasons, when he did well with the under-resourced Sampdoria and enjoyed a successful four years with Lazio. Much of what he achieved was down to the influence of two of his favourite players: Roberto Mancini and the Serb Sinisa Mihajlovic. They were natural leaders - Mancini, challenging and tactically astute; Mihajlovic, fiercely competitive with an extraordinary left foot - and when Eriksson left Sampdoria for Lazio, he took both with him. Without a Mancini in the England team, he chose Beckham and made the best of it. A week after England's most impressive victory under Eriksson, the 5-1 victory over Germany in September 2001, the manager talked of Beckham not just being a good player "but the symbol of a team that is growing".

It was true: the team became a reflection of its on-field leader - earnest, hard-working, famous, but not good enough to cope with the bad breaks that are routine in sport. Eriksson's England played 38 times in World Cup and European Championship matches, winning 26, drawing nine and losing three. Statistically it is a good record, but the nine draws conceal two penalty shoot-out defeats to Portugal, and under Eriksson they did not get beyond the quarter-finals in a big tournament. As damning as the failure to make a semi-final was the paucity of high-class performances. Apart from the emphatic victory in Munich, the performances that stand out are the 2-0 victory over Turkey at Sunderland's Stadium of Light in April 2003, the stylish 4-2 win over Croatia at Euro 2004, and the spirited 1-0 victory over Argentina in the 2002 World Cup finals. From 5½ years it wasn't much, and Eriksson's private life enlivened the periods between performances that didn't excite. What began as a tabloid story percolated into the broadsheets when it was discovered ?that his private life was less predictable than ?his beloved 4-4-2 football formation. ?However uncomfortable it was for him at the time, the toughest part is the legacy. In almost every review of his performance at England, there are references to his private life.

What did it matter then? What does it matter now - except that it still gets mentioned, even by those who care for Eriksson? However unfairly, it diminished his credibility and took its toll on his reputation as a football manager. He remains as defiant now as he was at the peak of the frenzy. "You have to live with it, but it is an extremely strange situation that I should be talked about or judged for what I did in my private life. As long as I am not doing anything criminal - and I was not doing anything criminal - it is not anybody else's business. I couldn't understand it. I still don't understand it. And I will never accept it. My private life, that has absolutely nothing to do with my football. If you find me in the bar at 7am on the day of a game, you can write about that, because it affects my job. But nothing affected my job. It was always the most important thing."

Though there is nobility in his disdain for our newspaper culture, it is also naive. Howard Wilkinson of the FA warned him that if he gave the tabloids a whiff of perfume that wasn't his girlfriend's, they would crucify him. He gave them the TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson and the FA secretary Faria Alam. They gave him hell. I suggest he could have found girlfriends a shade more discreet. He laughs softly: "Maybe you are right," he says. Wilkinson's warning was prescient. For a time, it was the coursing season and Eriksson was the hare. A photograph of him turning up for a meeting with Chelsea's owner, Roman Abramovich, was the basis of a story that suggested he was ready to leave England in the lurch. The accusation of treachery strikes him as absurdly unfair. "I had a contract with England, it was going to finish, and in football you can't really wait until your contract runs out. Because then it is too late to start looking for a new job. You're in an impossible situation as England coach, because if you talk to anybody else you are seen as a traitor. Why should that be? Everyone in football talks to other clubs when they know their contract is about to finish. You can't find anyone who doesn't. If people are on short-term contracts, they must plan for their futures. That means talking to people. I don't feel like I was a traitor. After the FA let it be known that I would not be manager after the 2006 World Cup, I was offered a job that would begin after Germany, but I said no. The news would have come out in public and, because it could have affected England's preparation for the World Cup, I didn't accept it. I regret that today, because I would not have been out of the game for a year."

The FA's decision to terminate his contract after last summer's World Cup was made after he was trapped into meeting a News of the World journalist posing as a rich Arab businessman in January 2006. He believed he was speaking privately to a prospective investor in football Eriksson was not particularly indiscreet, and ?he is adamant he did not say all that the newspaper reported him saying. It remains the one part of his experience with England that makes him angry. "The only thing that was very bad was that one newspaper caused me to lose my job, more or less, and I mean they put ?lies in the paper to hurt me. That's why I told my agent to sue. I said, 'It doesn't matter how much it costs, because I did not say those things.' What hurts me is that I believe the FA thought what was in the paper was true. There are ?two reasons I'm not manager of England today: firstly, we did not win the World Cup, and secondly, because one newspaper treated me unfairly. They [the News of the World] wrote that I said things which I did not say." His case against the newspaper was settled out of court, with the newspaper agreeing to pay his costs and a sum to a charity of his choice.

His sense of having been let down by the FA is understandable, though it is also easy to imagine his employers' weariness. According to Faria Alam, people at the FA came to believe Eriksson was "more trouble than he was worth". The former chief executive Mark Palios and the media director, Colin Gibson, resigned after it was revealed that Gibson tried to cut a deal with the News of the World that would have shopped Eriksson in return for saving Palios, who also had a fling with Alam. Under the terms of his old contract, Eriksson is still being paid by the FA, but he says it hasn't compensated him for an unwanted break from the game.

The so-called "golden generation" of English footballers has been generally supportive of their former manager. One of the more glowing tributes came from the team's most respected player, Steven Gerrard. "I was sad to see him go," the Liverpool player says. "I loved working with him. He was always constructive and definitely improved me as a player. He always believed in me, and for that I'll always be in his debt. I have so much respect for him. Sven kept leading England to quarter-finals, but not beyond, and that's one of my biggest regrets. I let him down. I wished I could have scored the goal or hit the pen that got England into the semi-finals. I'd have loved to see Sven's face as I scored the winner, because he is a great guy."

Eriksson was good at handling his best players, and much that he achieved was down to the easy harmony he created in the dressing room. His strengths were his loyalty to those he believed in. When things went wrong, his demeanour was a wonder: never mind, he always seemed to say, things will be better when they need to be. In his qualifying campaigns for the World Cup and European Championship, they invariably were. But at this higher level of World Cup and European Championship finals, his strengths could be weaknesses. When his most trusted players were not performing, he seemed like a deer caught in the headlights. Then his famed equanimity seemed like indecision.

He had other weaknesses that were exposed during his 5½ years with England. The mastery that one expected from years of learning at the highest university of tactical know-how, Serie A, rarely materialised. One of England's most thoughtful players, Gareth Southgate, offered an assessment in 2003 that comfortably survived the events of the following three years. "When the FA appointed Sven, I thought it was an enlightened choice and imagined he would bring sophistication to our tactical approach and a more intelligent game plan. There are limitations to the job that make it difficult for any England manager, and Sven has yet to rise above these problems. Maybe there is a method in his simplicity that I am missing. I cannot speak of a relationship with Sven, because my conversations with him have been few. He is a quiet man who observes from a distance. When he speaks to the team, he makes sense without inspiring anyone. His man-management has been good with some players, not great with others. He is not dislikable, but difficult to warm to. For me he remains an enigma. Have I learnt much from him? Tactically very little. He delegates the coaching responsibilities to his assistants, which, I guess, is good management. But really, I just don't know what he brings."

Three years after Southgate raised important questions, Eriksson picked his squad for the World Cup in Germany, naming just four strikers. With doubts about the fitness of both Rooney and Michael Owen, it seemed a needless gamble, especially as one of his strikers was the 17-year-old Theo Walcott, who had yet to start a Premiership game for his club, Arsenal. Walcott was in the squad, but as soon as he trained with the team, it was clear he wasn't an option. The daftness of the judgment was apparent from the earliest days on the training ground: Walcott wasn't ready to play for England, while the overlooked Spurs striker Jermain Defoe, present only in case Rooney didn't make it, was outstanding in training. It was clear to the players that a serious mistake had been made. Defoe went back home, Owen suffered an injury and, without forward options, England changed from a familiar 4-4-2 to a 4-5-1 formation for the knockout stages of the tournament. Even Eriksson's admirers thought that was madness. "Me and the other players arrived in Germany thinking we'd play 4-4-2 all the way through," said Gerrard. "But after Michael's injury we went 4-5-1. Even though we'd prepared for 4-5-1, we still weren't familiar enough with such a different system. Other World Cup teams stuck with one formation they spent ages fine-tuning. Not us. England changed for the knockout stage of a World Cup, and you cannot expect it to work immediately. Players need time to adapt from 4-4-2 to 4-5-1. Come on! The biggest stage of all is no place for bloody rehearsals."

Eriksson expresses disappointment at Gerrard's criticism. "We discussed how we would play; it is a pity things were not said then. My feeling was that against a Portuguese team that passed so well, we needed five in midfield. Otherwise we would have wasted too much energy trying to get the ball."

But Gerrard's passion is a reminder of what England lacked under Beckham's captaincy, when often it seemed the greatest concern was the next change of hairstyle, which, of course, coincided with international matches. Had Gerrard been four years older when Eriksson took over, it might have been different.

Eriksson says his feelings towards England have not been affected by media criticism. "I've never heard a bad word during six years of travelling around the country; everyone has always been polite to me. Not even after the defeat to Portugal. If I land at Heathrow today, people still want my autograph, which is nice, and a lot ?of them say, 'Sven, you did a good job - don't believe everything they say in ?the newspapers.' "

Since his sacking, he has returned to London many times and kept his house in the capital. It used to be a minor irritation that the press referred to his London home as palatial. "It has three bedrooms, two of them small, a living room, a kitchen and a small garden. I'll probably sell it and get a small apartment." When he talks about selling his London house, I mention having read something about him and Nancy Dell'Olio being an item no more and, unwittingly, trigger alarm. "Leave it. No comment, I am sorry, no comment," he says, politely but firmly. It is the only question he will not answer.

He waits now for the offer that will take him back into football, and expects that when summer comes and players return to their clubs for pre-season training, he will be back in the game. Eriksson was offered a contract to take over France's glamour club Marseille this summer by its new owners, but the sale of the club broke down late last month. Meanwhile, as the season draws to a close, leading Champions League clubs in Spain and Italy and senior Premiership clubs are courting him. He doesn't doubt that he can still be successful. "I have always been able to do this job," he says ?matter-of-factly. As I prepare to leave, he goes to fetch my jacket and, like a well-schooled butler, holds it open as I slip my arms through the sleeves. He then walks me to the hallway and points to the bronze bust of a formidable-looking woman. "This lady," he says, "was Selma Lagerlöf, a very famous Swedish novelist who lived in this area. She became the first woman to win the Nobel prize for literature for her novel Gösta Berling's Saga." First published in 1891, it tells the story of a country pastor whose lust for life led to him being defrocked and whose journey of atonement saw him fall in with a dozen like-minded cavaliers, then become involved in a power struggle with the richest woman in the province. "The story," says Eriksson, "was set in the eight big houses around Lake Fryken, and although she did not live in this house, Selma Lagerlöf wrote the final chapter in a bedroom upstairs." I ask if he has read the book.

"Many times - it's an excellent story."

The memory of how much he enjoyed it lights up his face and, yes, you imagine the antics of the defrocked priest would have made him smile. For a minute or two, he is Svennis Eriksson. Animated, smiling, relaxed and ready to talk about things beyond the four white lines that have contained much of his life. Then Sven Eriksson Sr is at the door, ready to taxi the visitor back to his hotel, and the spell is broken

TRUE OR FALSE?

Eriksson was more interested in making money than in his England duties

In six years, Eriksson undertook at least 17 unpaid personal appearances for charitable and footballing causes, accepted six paid personal appearances, and turned down over 40 appearances worth over £2m in fees

TRUE OR FALSE?

Eriksson is being paid thousands of pounds a day to see out his contract, which runs until 2008

Eriksson's initial contract with the FA was for £2.25m a year. In 2006 it was renewed for £3m per year at the FA's request. After the World Cup, he agreed on six months on full pay and six months on half pay - less than £2.25m of the £6m he could have insisted upon

TRUE OR FALSE?

EriKsson was ready to quit England for high-paying club jobs in the run-up to the World Cup

Despite widely reported approaches from Manchester United and Chelsea, Eriksson stayed loyal to his England obligations. In April 2006 he refused to meet with representatives of a European Champions League club, as it would have meant him entering negotiations during the run-up to the World Cup

TRUE OR FALSE?

The 'Fake Sheikh' Sting last year saw Eriksson accused of plotting to walk out on the England job after the World Cup

At the time of the sting, the FA had already told Eriksson that his contract would be terminated straight after the World Cup. Eriksson sued, and two months ago the tabloid paid him an out-of-court settlement believed to be a substantial six-figure sum covering his legal costs and contributing to a charity of his choice

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