Instead, nearly six years on, we are back where we started when the FA appointed its first foreign manager, which is to say with good players underachieving and playing Neanderthal football. Some of the stuff England have inflicted on an otherwise enthralling World Cup warrants a charge of bringing the game into disrepute and was horribly reminiscent of the Graham Taylor nadir.
Where did it all go wrong? Hindsight points us to October 2000, when an FA head-hunting sub-committee met to find a replacement for Kevin Keegan. At its first session one key member, Arsenal’s David Dein, was away on club business. In his absence, it was agreed to go for Robson, who was then at Newcastle, but at the second meeting Dein and the then chief executive, Adam Crozier, made the case for Eriksson so successfully that they carried the day on a unanimous vote.
On the face of it the appointment was a worthwhile break from a hidebound past and deserved a fair wind, which, with a few xenophobic exceptions, it received. But looking back, a bit more digging at the time might have had the FA looking elsewhere.
In Italian football, which is where Eriksson’s reputation is rooted, his teams were generally not only dull and defensive, but usually expensive. He started in Serie A with Roma in May 1984. This famous old club had won the scudetto in 1983 and was runner-up in the league and losing finalist in the European Cup to Liverpool in 1983-84. Yet the next season, Eriksson’s first, Roma finished seventh. Wherever he went — Roma, Fiorentina, Sampdoria, Lazio — he had an unfortunate habit of losing the big matches, and he was known in Italy as Perdente di Successo (the Successful Loser) until Sergio Cragnotti bankrolled him, Abramovich-style, for Lazio to win the league in 2000.
A closer scrutiny of Eriksson’s record in club management would also have forewarned the FA that he was a stranger to the concept of loyalty. At Benfica he accepted a new two-year contract and promptly decamped to Roma. Then, while at Sampdoria, he agreed to succeed Ray Harford at Blackburn Rovers, only to renege when a better offer (from Lazio) came along.
His inaugural press conference as England coach was on November 2, 2000. Suspicions that the new regime might be as much about style as substance surfaced that first day, when the Swede appeared sporting a Remembrance Day poppy pinned on him by an FA flunky. He said nothing of note, dead-batting every question in that now-familiar stolid fashion that had the man from the News of the World exclaiming: “Christ, to think it’s going to be like this for the next five years!” At the time I thought this was unfair, and that Eriksson would open up as he became more familiar with the press corps and the English language. In reality, however, he never really changed, and his reign was characterised by evasiveness and banal phrases such as “First half good, second half not so good” and “We will make a good World Cup”.
Almost as an afterthought that first day, it was announced that Eriksson would be bringing Tord Grip, his Swedish mentor-turned-assistant, with him. Some afterthought. Grip, whose role was never clear — he did no coaching — earned £500,000 a year for scouting. For comparative purposes, Venables was never on more than £140,000 as manager and has been offered £400,000 to baby-sit the Steve McClaren regime.
Eriksson started on £2.75m, net of tax, which was to rise to £4.25m. Otto Rehhagel, who managed Greece when they won Euro 2004, was paid £490,000 a year. Eriksson took charge on January 11, 2001, with England bottom of their World Cup qualifying group and Germany, who had won atWembley to precipitate Keegan’s abrupt departure, in pole position. It is easily forgotten what a shambolic state England were in.
Against Germany Keegan deployed Gareth Southgate, a central defender, in midfield, and the poverty of the team’s play was such that they were booed off at the end, causing their tearfully distraught manager to resign on the spot. The players were in urgent need of organisation and an experienced steadying hand. Eriksson provided both.
Rio Ferdinand put it thus: “He immediately came over as someone different — out of the ordinary. He’s so cool, so calm. He doesn’t rant or rave or come in swearing his head off. That first day he stood there in front of us and said, ‘Listen, it’s a simple game. I want to play 4-4-2, which you’re all used to’. He then went through all the positions in the team, explaining what he expected from them. When we came out of that meeting, I turned to Frank Lampard and said, ‘Bloody hell, man, he has just made the game so simple’.”
Their football stripped down to basics, England’s results improved in leaps and bounds, culminating in that never-to-be-forgotten 5-1 triumph in Germany in September 2001, when, as English fans have gleefully reminded the locals throughout this World Cup, “Even (Emile) Heskey scored”.
Before that mind-blowing result, supporters would have been grateful to get to the 2002 finals through the playoffs. They were spared that ordeal by “Beckham’s Match”, when the captain seemed to take on Greece single-handed before scoring the last-gasp equaliser that secured automatic qualification as group winners. At this stage nobody cared that Eriksson cut a passive figure, bordering on the catatonic on the training ground and on the bench.
Nor, at this juncture, was Eriksson’s closeness to Beckham and the increasing influence the captain enjoyed an issue. Beckham was sometimes allowed to stay in superior accommodation to the rest of the players and on at least one occasion changed the venue for pre-tournament acclimatisation, from Spain to Sardinia.
The draw for the 2002 World Cup placed England in the “Group of Death” alongside Argentina, Sweden and Nigeria, but the FA had more to worry about than that. In February it was at panic stations when it was revealed that Manchester United wanted Eriksson to replace Sir Alex Ferguson, who had announced his decision to retire at the end of the season. Not only did they want him, they knew they could get him, because Eriksson confirmed as much through the “super agent” Pini Zahavi.
The FA breathed a huge sigh of relief when Ferguson executed a U-turn and signed a three-year extension to stay at Old Trafford, but it was learning the hard way that where Eriksson was concerned, loyalty was a one-way street. Chelsea would be next on his list of alternative employers, but there were other crises before Roman Abramovich parked his T-34 tanks on English football’s front lawn.
In April 2002 Eriksson was due to meet Grip to discuss his World Cup squad when the story broke of his affair with Ulrika Jonsson. He had lived with an Italian, Nancy Dell’Olio, since 1999, but they were not married, and the FA dismissed newspaper reports of his infidelity as a private matter. Nevertheless, the week of lurid headlines that followed was an embarrassment the FA could have done without.
The fans were prepared to overlook just about anything as long as England were winning. As ever, the squad travelled to the World Cup with great expectations, flattering only to deceive. A notable 1-0 victory over Argentina raised false hopes that were dashed in galling circumstances in their quarter-final against Brazil. Trailing 2-1 to 10 men after Ronaldinho’s sending-off, Eriksson cut a clueless figure, unable to improve a car wreck of a performance. It was the defining moment of his management. Put to the test, tactically and as a motivator, he was found wanting. Guus Hiddink, who might have succeeded him, articulated it best when he said: “England were one of the biggest disappointments of the tournament. Of all the negative European teams, they were the worst. It was terrible to see them play like that. They could not leave with their heads high.”
The consensus was that England could, and should, have done better, but a change of management was never seriously considered. As Crozier put it: “There was a belief among the players and the coaching staff that we were in with a good shout for the 2004 European Championships.”
Just a few months before that tournament in Portugal, Eriksson did it again, turning up at the London home of Peter Kenyon, Chelsea’s chief executive, to discuss replacing Claudio Ranieri as manager at Stamford Bridge. Unfortunately for Eriksson, he was caught on camera and the pictures of his visit were published in The Sun.
The FA was worried. At his first press conference, the new chief executive, Mark Palios, had to admit that contingency plans had been made. It was expected that Eriksson would leave after Euro 2004, probably for Chelsea, and Steve McClaren was the preferred candidate to replace him. But Eriksson stayed. In Portugal, after a wobble against France where a 1-0 lead was surrendered late on, becoming a 2-1 defeat, England advanced to the quarter-finals, where they faced the hosts and “Big Phil” Scolari. England were unlucky. Michael Owen put them ahead in the third minute, but Wayne Rooney fractured a metatarsal midway through the first half, and his team’s hopes went with him. Portugal won, albeit only on penalties, and Eriksson was fortunate to survive the inquest.
He did so largely because the FA, after almost doubling his wages to fend off Chelsea, couldn’t afford to pay up a ludicrously inflated contract, which had four years to run. For this reason, more than any other, he was able to survive his sexual shenanigans with Faria Alam and his economy with the truth when questioned about the matter by the FA’s executive director, David Davies.
He survived some pretty ropey England performances, too — notably a 4-1 drubbing by Denmark last August and the 1-0 defeat in Belfast the next month — and in the end it took a fake sheikh to bring him down.
There was just time to take England to Germany and burnish that reputation as Perdente di Successo. But once more he came up short.
