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- guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 January 2001 12.06 GMT
Cheer up Kevin Keegan. Paving the way for the first ever foreigner to coach England might not be the most desirable way to quit the international arena, but at least the pair of Swedes who have taken over the reins are confirmed Liverpool fans.
Sven-Göran Eriksson and Tord Grip used their first joint press conference yesterday to talk about their visits to England 20 years ago, when Anfield was a magnet pulling them both. 'We have both liked English football for years, we were always coming over in winter from Sweden, and I think it's fair to say we were both Liverpool fans at that time,' said Grip, Eriksson's chosen assistant and former mentor. 'I liked Liverpool a lot then,' Eriksson agreed. 'Who didn't? I liked the easy way they played. One touch, two touches, simple but effective.'
Liverpool have spent the past 10 years trying to rediscover that brilliant simplicity, even to the extent of appointing a foreign coach of their own. Grip, who watched them against Crystal Palace last week and was impressed with both sides in the Worthington Cup semi-final, is of the opinion that Liverpool are on their way back, though, of course, he could be biased. He is on much firmer ground with the assertion that in Steven Gerrard, Liverpool possess an England star of the future.
Grip was disappointed Gerrard missed the last international in Turin, where Eriksson could have assessed the young midfielder's potential for himself, and cannot wait for the opportunity to renew his boss's acquaintance with Liverpool.
'The first time I saw Gerrard was at Tottenham, when Liverpool lost,' Grip said. 'But you could see he was a real Liverpool player. He only needs one or two touches, he keeps things simple, he's athletic, good in the air and a good passer.'
England's assistant coach was not quite as effusive about anyone else, though anyone worried he might only see things through a red perspective can rest assured. Grip, like Eriksson, was impressed with the spirit and confidence of Peter Taylor's young England in Italy last year, and has already picked out several promising players from outside the England set-up.
He expressed frustration at not seeing enough of Arsenal's Ashley Cole, a player he regards as at least as good as Silvinho, and it is not too difficult to work out why he took Eriksson to watch West Ham on his first day in the job.
'Michael Carrick, Trevor Sinclair and Joe Cole, West Ham have some good players to watch,' he said. Plus, as Eriksson broke in to point out, he badly needed to check up on the Sunderland left back, Michael Gray, whose identity had escaped him three months ago.
Joking apart, Grip has been watching English football for most of that time, and confessed to being pleasantly surprised by the standard. 'It's different to Italy, but it won't be hard for Sven to adapt,' he said. 'There are good players at every club, even into the First Division. I saw Fulham and Crystal Palace last week, and I like the way they both play football.'
Yes, but how many of their players are qualified to play football for England? 'Building a national team is something else,' Grip said. 'Because of the number of foreigners here you are often looking at taking just one or two players from a number of clubs, but it has always been the same. People imagine there used to be many more players available to England, but I'm not sure that's true.
'How many players did the great Liverpool team of 20 years ago supply to England? Ian Rush, Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness, Alan Hansen were all great players, but they were all foreigners. In some ways international management in a country like Sweden can be easier, because a top club could have seven or eight players all qualified to play for their country. It tends to simplify things if you can basically pick the Gothenburg team with a few reinforcements.'
Grip has been a manager in his own right - he was at Malmo for six years and beat Eriksson to a job with a national side when he was briefly in charge of Norway - but he would have been assistant coach at Lazio for longer than the past two years were it not for Italian regulations.
'I always wanted Tord as my assistant in Italy, but the rules until recently stated any foreign coach had to have an Italian assistant,' Eriksson explained. 'As soon as the rules changed, I brought Tord out to Italy.'
The pair took the Rome side to the title last season, but that success has quickly soured for Eriksson in the couple of months since his appointment as England manager. 'I don't suppose my new job helped,' he admitted. 'It certainly came up every time we lost a game. I would have to count the last couple of months as a failure. Some players were not happy with me, and when Lazio lose to Napoli at home, nobody is happy. That was certainly a failure. I had hoped to carry on longer, but I thought it best to make a stop. To give everybody a better chance. It is never a good situation when you break a contract, but I hope it was the right decision.'
Eriksson is surely being hard on himself here. There is no evidence Lazio regard him so uncharitably, and in the fullness of time he will be seen to have been one of the club's most successful managers. Yet the new England manager has seen most things in football and is perfectly willing to discuss the bad as well as the good. 'I was sacked with two games to play at Roma,' he said. 'I knew I'd be going anyway because I didn't have the same ideas as the chairman about what to do for next season.'
This most erudite of football men - 'I like to read in my spare time, and not just newspapers, sometimes even books' - surely also knows that failure and the England job go hand in hand. Six managers in 10 years tells its own story. 'It means you won't have had much consistency,' he said. 'How long will I stay? That's the one question I can't answer. It's down to results, as it is with any manager, and I just hope we can do a good job. You can't go into a job like this worrying about the future though. If I thought I was going to fail I would not be here. I'm here to take decisions to make the team better, that's the only thing that is important.'
Apart from the next match, of course. Not the friendly against Spain at the end of next month, but the World Cup qualifier against Finland a fortnight later. 'You can look at our fixtures and say Germany away will be the toughest game, maybe even the key game,' Eriksson said. 'But the next game will always be the most important. If we don't win that, the rest of the fixtures might not really matter.'
