Football Godfathers : Sven-Göran Eriksson

it's over england are out of the world cup we were ready 2006. we should have done it at that time after extra time following a nil-nil draw against portugal i thought we were mentally stronger for that but at the end we weren't once again they've lost on penalties is that your biggest regret in football losing that game was football management is a tough job [Music] in a harsh and unforgiving industry success is all that matters and failure has shown no mercy in nearly 30 years of covering the sport that i love i've been fortunate enough to watch the great and the good at work up close and sometimes very personal [Music] but now i want to dig deeper to find out what it takes to be a celebrated and successful manager what they were born with who inspired them what they've learned on their way to the very top of the game the changes they've seen in football and the changes they've helped create these are my football godfathers svenure and erickson is one of those recognized managers in the world of football he rose from relative obscurity here in his native sweden from the third division took on to win trophies all across europe in portugal italy and then he took the big one the england manager's job he's had a fantastic and colorful career to say the very least i'm looking forward to renewing old acquaintances and seeing whether this time we really can't get to know the real svengal eriksen the average england football fan could name three of your former girlfriends yeah and i'm not very proud of that hello hello how are you good to see you yeah i expected to qualify for the world cup i'm surprised to get such a warm welcome for a member of the english media don't kill this young boy you can kill me because you don't need me anymore come in please [Music] i want to start first of all right here where we are in sweden very very close to where you were brought up how much of your character your personality was formed here and how would you describe that character i would guess a lot because i'm born here i grew up here and i left this place when i was 18 19. so a lot of me is like people are here i would guess which is what rather calm especially if you speak about my parents my brother and so on my family we don't shout very much calm thinking about if we have a problem what to do how to resolve it things like that [Music] it's got a fantastic character this is in your soul isn't it this is you yeah i'm born down there and i've grown up up there can you tell me your very earliest football memory i think my grandfather took me and my grandfather lived on the other side of the lake there he took me to football match when soon which is a couple of kilometers here played in second division which was great for this place of sweden and we were looking at the game against one of the most famous teams in in in sweden and at that time one of the big fans of zuma he was sitting next to me and my grandfather and he talked about the players in sun and i thought he talked so i told him and i remember my grandfather was very very proud of me said to his wife sven he talked to the biggest fan of sunnah and told him what to do and what to do [Music] as a player i always dreamt about to be a first division football player in in sweden and of course to be a national team player but i was not good enough for that and i tried very very very hard i trained more than anybody else by myself and together with other people not only the normal practice sessions but i was not good enough for it did you know that yourself straight away yeah when you're starting to be 25 26 you realize that i'm not going anywhere i was uh so and so right back in second division and that was the maximum i achieved in football as a player when was this mate 15 years ago maybe but i don't know if it looks like me or not stand next to it and see if there's a likeness [Music] that was maybe one of the biggest changes in my life so i think he wanted to help me and what he saw in me to be a coach i don't know but we've been together and we know each other very well so i always thank tor grip for the proposal he came with and one of my best decisions in life to stop playing and start to be a coach and yet within five years you go from coaching a third division team to winning the treble in sweden as a manager and sweden's first ever european trophy yes that's true it happened very quickly yes and when tord said i'm leaving now after one year year we worked together i said what shall i do then well you take over the team and i told him you know told i'm too young for that i don't have the experience and things like that it's already done he said i have fixed that the job is yours [Music] i've been to england i went to liverpool many times to see them i went to see bobby robson in ipswich which was great it's funny you should say that but i have here a program from wow ipswich town versus aston villa yes that's a game i saw the very night thank you very much what memories does that bring back and what stories big memories because at that time this was 78 yeah he didn't know me i had sent him a letter asking can i come and look at training and i got to know yes you can come and i met him for the first time and at the training at the training the day before this match and did he show you training was generously i saw the training and then i said do you have two minutes for me and we were sitting there for three hours talking and i was up in the sky and then at the end they asked me do you have tickets for tomorrow's game no i said but i will buy that don't don't worry i take care of that now where do you want to sit in the stand they said or on the bench with me i said i can't sit on the bench of course you can so i was sitting next to him incredible he was a wonderful man that was bobby robson yes [Music] although they were and they are obviously one of sweden's most famous clubs at the time they were not doing well were they no they had struggled a little bit and they bought a lot of famous football players some of them old coming back from professional football in holland and so on so they wanted to do better i was very nervous probably i never been that nervous in my life because i was no one and if you talked about football sweden they didn't know who i was they never heard the name so division it's one thing to play in the first division top level is quite another thing and they had players playing in the national team been playing and around europe as professionals the style they played they called it champang football it was elegant it should be dribbling it would be things like that and of course when i started there i did quite the opposite we have done same practice more or less every day the players they were fed up with it i i suppose but also they knew exactly what to do every time every second of the game attacking defending because we never changed our way of playing it was four four two and if it was one minute two minutes to go and we had one nil or two nil i took out a striker and i put in another striker i never put out a striker and put in a midfielder or a defender never four four two that's it totally the opposite and some of the fans became very angry on me how did you win them over by winning football games when the results came life is easy now like all swedes you've got a volvo in your garage but you've got a bit more than that haven't you yeah some memories is this the ufo cup winning team yes 82 [Music] [Applause] [Music] we have to remember your players at the time they weren't all full-time were they they were were they all full-time professionals no no no no in sweden no even when we won 1982 the ufc what sort of jobs were your players doing well one of them was a plumber and he came the day before and said matchday can i have a half day off i said yes for sure you can so he worked from seven to twelve in the morning as a plumber and then played in the european final and he scored but if you tell that today people can't believe it but that was the case swedish football was not professional in the beginning of 80s 80s so even though you won the home leg one nil was there still very much an air of oh well they've had their day in the sun this will all finish in germany very much so and they were sure to win and they should have won maybe but not as they played but all people said okay gothenburg has done it very well so far but now it's finished and it wasn't you know at that time the teams from south and europe or rest of jewelry they didn't really understood what we were doing and when you look at it from outside it looked very easy and we looked clumsy maybe so every team we met they they thought easy but when you are there and you don't have time on the ball because we pressed all the time then you realize wow this is not easy when benfica came well goodbye and that's it they hate each other let's sell senori what do you mean by that did you know that you were going to start a war yes i'm in sweden in the hometown of svenuan eriksen a football godfather who's won multiple titles during a managerial career that has spanned over four decades is this the uefa cup winning team yes by 1981 sven was one of the hottest properties in european football having led swedish part-timers gothenburg to victory in the uefa cup with a host of clubs pursuing him he could take his pick he chose lisbon as his destination to manage portuguese giants benfica [Music] did you know that was the perfect moment to leave sweden yeah i had renewed my contract with gothenbury at that time and i put in a clausul and that was between quarter-final and semi-final in the uefa cap i put in if a big european club comes i can leave and that happened and when benfica jude's club came well what to do saying goodbye and that's it so how did you feel when you went to benfica and they walked you around and they showed you their trophy room which included two european cups when i came from gotham i had some something in my luggage yes and benfica had not been winning titles for some time so i think it was easier at that time i knew that i can do something before i went to gothenburg i didn't know that i had no idea i couldn't dream about that [Music] wow nice yeah everybody wants to win feet cassie so live [Music] that was the golden period of italian football wasn't it when you were there yes when all the world's great players were there yes it was i think 80s 90s the best football they played in italy the best players the interest of football was incredible well it's always interested always big in italy but during that time italian football was the most watched i would guess i came to roma and it was difficult because it was an old team with old players who were on the way down so i struggled in the beginning my first year in roma was difficult difficult here why when people coming half an hour late 45 minutes late and [Music] third fourth time it's traffic i said bloody hell of course it's traffic you live in rome so i sometimes i thought i should have gone to barcelona instead because i had an offer from barcelona i have a long list of clubs that you nearly managed yeah nearly but anyhow second year and the years after became much better [Applause] now look here this is this is before the stress of management gotcha look all over here during your spell in italy you were in the shadow the dark shadow of match fixing and gambling how did you find that and dealing with that with the roma when we lost against leche at home five of the players were accused of selling the game [Music] nobody knows was it true was it not true but that's a really the only time i was connected with it and i was could you smell it though sven on the day could you tell there's something not right here well that game yes you think what was that why did that happen of course but you have to think in the future you cannot go and think about that you have to learn how to deal with the defeat because you will have defeat and that's very very difficult to accept and to come over i never sleep after a game if we win draw or lose but when you lose it's harder so you have to take that out of your head now sven it's a new game next sunday so that's one thing and i think i learned very quickly that don't think me don't think sven that you know everything about football you have to listen to other coaches and also listen to your own players because they might have very good ideas about what's right what's wrong how to do things but i think i learned that very early in my career [Music] was it difficult to go to lazio having previously been the manager of roma a little bit because of roman lazio that's two teams from rome and the darbys that's serious things very serious they they hate each other i was convinced that unfortunately senori and also another player less famous they were not good for the team they were not good for the atmosphere they were negative in everything they always said lots you can never ever win anything lazy is good until christmas then we go down let's use a team with bad luck always and hearing this every day from the big star national team player captain on the team i decided no i don't want to hear this anymore did you know that you were going to start a war yes well you understood it when i went to the owner the chairman and said he was sitting we had lunch together and at the end of the lunch i said i had some i have something important to ask you he looked at me and said what do you mean by that we can't sell signuri yes we can and i had to convince him and we didn't [Applause] and the police were there and we we couldn't train because people came over the walls and and i was sitting on my volvo banking but then of course that's good yes and yeah i had a wee head i should say extremely good football team maybe the best club team i ever had i had for example six seven of these players could be easily the captain of the team all experienced all playing football on extremely high level and all of them winners and positive people we can do it we shall win it was great to have them maybe that was one of my best times as a coach but first of all you live in rome you win i think we won seven titles in three years with a team who hadn't won anything for 30 years 25 30 years and rome is beautiful so it was difficult at that time to play a dinner in a restaurant so no great times but then that finished and life has to go on don't kill this young boy you can kill me because you don't need me anymore yeah i expected to qualify for the world cup we've already 2006 we should have done it at that time [Music] this is the last game i'm in conversation with sven euron erickson the footballing godfather who has won league championships in three different countries i think we won seven titles in three years great times by the beginning of the new millennium sven's success at club level led into the role that proved to be the biggest challenge of his career boss welcome to england england england great really yeah england is great of course did you actually say when you were offered the job that it was the biggest job in the world at the time yes i did i still say no one's playing but myself you know i did it to the very best of my ability but i'm just not the man to take that stage further was there any part of you that hesitated because you would be the first foreign manager of england i had three three and a half years behind me extremely successful and i was very very happy in italy with lazio and with the city rome so one small thought was shall i give up this to jump on something you don't know if it's going to be successful or not but the other part of the head said you cannot say no to that you have to take it and that's it do you remember when you took the job meeting the british prime minister yes and what he said to you he asked me if we should take a bet this is tony blair tony blair yes yes i was confused because that was the first welcome to england shall we take a bet yes he said who is going to keep the job longest you or me he said because he said two impossible jobs he won the bet [Laughter] what did you expect and did it turn out to be similar to what you expected what i expected yeah i expected to qualify for the world cup yes [Applause] [Music] [Applause] many many times i interviewed you before and after games and if you england after the 5-1 against germany or after the loss to northern ireland to the outside there wasn't a lot of difference yeah maybe but you know you are never as good as people think you are after winning five one against germany you're never that good and on the other hand you are never that bad as people think you are after losing northern ireland away one nil in a qualification game so you are somewhere in in the middle there but that's not what you and your colleagues want to hear no surely it's human after you've just beaten germany 5-1 in their own backyard that's euphoric isn't it a sensational moment one for celebration not we're going to win the world cup but real celebration and when you lose with all due respect to northern ireland and play badly that's that's a terrible result of course but you were like that you weren't sven like you were zen-like no maybe but i think that's how i am of course i have all the feelings that everybody has you're happy you're angry you're disappointed whatever it is and of course beating germany 5-1 you are up there but try to to stay on the ground because there will be more games and probably all of them will not be as easy as it was in germany during his time as england boss erikson experienced first hand the intense media scrutiny of a position that one of his predecessors graham taylor described as the impossible job i remember my first press conference in in england in london and i expected a big thing but it was bigger than i thought true and the questions yeah some nice some good some not that nice but anyhow it was big but you get prepared of that because i came from italy and the press in italy is not a kindergarten so i think i was prepared then i was not prepared about outside football well my private life i was not prepared of that [Music] i could never imagine that that would be such a mess in one way such interest around what i thought was what was said but it became much much bigger than i thought [Music] before you the man in the street could probably not name the partner of the english manager i think the average england football fan could name three of your former girlfriends yeah and i'm not very proud of that at all unfortunately yes what shall i say shall i defend myself or i don't know do you think that i mean it gave you a reputation as a womanizer and do you think it damaged your image i don't think it damaged my football results or how people looked at me as a coach i don't think so but my image outside football i think it damaged yes i think so but i'm not sure about that i never asked people about that i never talked about it publicly because i naive maybe because i thought well why do you call it private life it's private but it was not very much private during these times in england it would be impossible yeah it was impossible in one way but did you ever feel the need to say anything to the players at all about what was happening in your private life yeah first time this is 2002 we're talking about when it came out about a woman which one well a swedish one okay i think we know so i felt the first training i felt what shall i tell the players and because it has nothing to do with football but anyhow i'm i'm the manager of them and we're going into a world cup and so i i said sorry gentlemen about all the fast newspapers and it can't help us as a team or helping me or helping you and i'm sorry then one of the players stood up and said boss welcome to england and that was it and it was i felt good now this is over [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] fake sake yeah they try to offer me a job in dubai but i said no to that at once i was not interested in them then they came into other things and aston villa i was on the yeah why not aston villa when i finish in england but that had nothing to do with money really well if you believe the news of the world yes but they never offered me they offered me a job and said big money but i was not interested in that [Music] they were dubbed the golden generation the england players that you had do you believe they deserved that accolade in terms of other players around the world oh i don't know that i don't know where it came from the golden generation the truth is there were a lot of good footprints during that time and i always said i'm still saying i think we were not ready to win the world cup 2002 no or euro 2004 but we were ready 2006. that was one of the best games england played during my time i lost more or less everything when i was in england is that probably your biggest regret in football losing that game was you could only save one piece of football memorabilia what would you save oh maybe that one i'm in a small swedish town of sunny with football godfather svenuan eriksen a groundbreaker who oversaw swedish club football's first european triumph and became the first ever foreign manager of the england national team when i finished the job in england fa they gave me some good memories there absolutely after reaching the quarterfinals in both the 2002 world cup and the 2004 european championships england headed to the world cup in germany two years later with mounting expectations to go further [Music] we should have done it at that time so why didn't you win it well we played one hour 10 against 11. that didn't help you for sure [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] once again penalty shootouts i thought we were mentally stronger for that [Music] [Applause] [Music] but at the end we weren't is that probably your biggest regret in football yeah it's the biggest loss when we losing against portugal and you know that that was my last game you coming into the dressing room yes what shall you say we lost talking about the future that was bad it was not easy losing that game was i remember being at the press conference and there wasn't a lot of talk about the penalties there was a lot of interest in rooney and how he had inverted comments let his country down but europe pains to protect him weren't you yes of course because even if that was the last minutes of my work as england manager my job is still to protect football players always especially my players and i remember 98 beckham and they killed him after he's been sent off so i said something like and i meant it really from my heart don't kill this young boy he's still young and i said you need him and i also said you can kill me because you don't need me anymore and that's the fact very generous well i think it's your duty as a goat pay attention please he is the golden boy of english football don't kill him do you have a favorite moment as england manager well you talked about germany of course but i think many other times every time you qualify for the big tournaments it's big we qualified beating greece free kick beckham 90 minutes and more and you feel i think you beat argentina in the world cup [Applause] and you know that this was an extremely good performance we did defending attacking really professional maybe people don't remember they don't but i think that was one of the best games england played during my time there also some other times as england manager where you appeared to want to leave to sign a contract and go to another club chelsea in particular spaniard ericsson is once again facing trial by tabloid after he was seen visiting new chelsea in a roman abramovich yes true manchester united before that then criticism is your england manager and you're negotiating to take a job elsewhere do you regret those actions if you're the england manager you have to sit and do the whole [Music] contract you have with them you cannot finish by yourself because then you're a traitor so you have to sit and wait until they secure or the contract is finished maybe it's fair but i was in lazio i was in the middle of a contract i had one and a half year to go and england comes up so i asked lazio i'm leaving and it was the same when chelsea came up but it came out in the papers and it became a big thing and of course i think f5 felt embarrassed they said i cannot stop it so at the end i signed a a new contract that was the start of the the label you're given that you're money-minded you're um avaricious do you reject that or is money that's something important to you yes i'm born poor happy but i didn't have money my parents didn't have money of course i had money i never suffered anything no but not rich at all i became a little bit healthy by football i lost more or less everything when i was in england or end of my england to a con man [Music] yep so i became rather poor again and then well going to china and some other countries and i'm okay now but money has never been anything which interested me and i never knew how much money i had in the bank when i had money they tell you when you don't have money then the bank phones you yeah it works yeah so money has never been anything which have been i think i got that in england i don't know why but i think that was not fair because i'm not like that i had more hair at that time that's what the england job does to you takes it away i think he captured you if you could meet a young svenjoran ericsson aged just 26 about to go into his first coaching job what advice would you like to give him it would be great if life was like that you could start again with good advices it's not like that but yeah you always do some mistakes in life of course we all do it and [Music] you regret it and life goes on i would tell him next time think twice before you take a big decisions decision going to the right club the right moment and things like that do you think whether they are clubs or situations or people in your life that perhaps has not turned out so well for you that they were impulsive decisions that you should have thought through better sometimes yes for sure and if you want something really want something sometimes you you rush it you should sit down and think about it a couple of more minutes maybe but that's life i mean that makes life it's a hypothetical question thrilling as well you you want it and you take it well sven all i can say um thank you very much for having us here pleasure in your home it's been a wonderful wonderful journey and i hope you've enjoyed it thank you thank you very much [Music] [Music] you