- The Observer,
- Sunday June 2 2002
During a long conversation with someone who knows Sven-Göran Eriksson better than most, it becomes apparent why we English have difficulty understanding the manager of our national football team: we are looking for hidden depths. Which is not the same as saying that instead we should be looking for hidden shallows.
The former Liverpool player and Sweden international Glenn Hysen, who served for seven years under Eriksson as a player (five at Gothenburg, two at Fiorentina), refers two or three times to what a down-to-earth man Eriksson is. Surely not: he reads Tibetan poetry, comes from the land of Ingmar Bergman and speaks with the long, thoughtful pauses of an academician. The fact is, though, that Eriksson is simply a football manager. Hysen even uses the word simple (meaning not complicated) to describe him.
'He's always been the same,' says Hysen. 'He's so simple, just like everybody else. He doesn't want to fly around up there somewhere.' Perhaps it's the flying metaphor that makes him then refer to Eriksson's recent trouble with 'birds' - well Hysen did play for Liverpool in the 1980s - but he quickly returns to the theme of the manager's ordinariness. 'He's always been very down to earth and I think that's the big thing with him. I think the players feel he's the same level as they are.'
All of which makes sense because if Eriksson had been the mastermind that his scholarly demeanour suggests and if he really had been serious about his Tibetan poetry, the last place he would have wanted to end up would have been sharing a dressing room with non-readers such as Michael Owen and David Beckham. Being thoughtful is not exclusive to the brainy and why Eriksson is generally regarded as unfathomable is for no other reason than he has transposed his profession's norm by thinking more than he talks.
And so do people who enjoy the odd dalliance. Hysen's glancing reference to Ulrika Jonsson raises the inevitable topic earlier than intended. He doesn't think the publicity will have fazed Eriksson because he had to deal with something similar in Italy when the press there 'just took something out of the air, which had no truth at all in it. I don't know how much truth there is in this [the Jonsson affair], but they built it up so much in England. This is his private life. He's not married. So what?' And is this how people in Sweden have reacted? 'There is a group of people in Sweden who say, "Oh, we thought he was so good and so nice," but I think 90 per cent of Swedes still think the same about him after this. They know him as a coach. They know him as a good coach.'
The essence of Eriksson's success as a coach seems to be a combination of three things: his understanding of the game, his ability to communicate this knowledge to the players and the respect that flows from the first two. Hysen says there was some scepticism about Eriksson when he started as the coach at Gothenburg in 1979 because of his modest credentials as a player and it was to his credit that this did not last long. 'A former player, when he takes over as manager, has a big respect from the team because he has been so good on the pitch himself. He [Eriksson] had a harder job to get that respect, which makes it even more impressive what he's done.'
And there's a fourth virtue, Hysen thinks - Eriksson's willingness to pick young players. Graeme Le Saux, Darren Anderton and Steve McManaman may not see it as a virtue; Joe Cole, Owen Hargreaves and Darius Vassell almost certainly do. 'When I was at Gothenburg and Fiorentina, the coaches that were there before Eriksson wanted to play with the same old players; they didn't dare to take in the new, young, talented ones. But Eriksson did that all the time.'
At Gothenburg, the players were very soon in Eriksson's thrall. Hysen, now 42, who has just started combining his work as a TV pundit with coaching the Swedish second division side Torslanda, where his methods are strongly influenced by what he learnt under Eriksson, remembers: 'When he tells you something in training it makes sense, so you trust what he says, believe in it and do it when you're on the field.' And he has his own special way of imparting what he wants done that leaves the listener's hair as moist as when he began. It's as if he is forever practising how to whisper sweet nothings.
But it's not simply a schmoozing voice; it's effective. After Gothenburg won the Uefa Cup in 1982, Eriksson and Hysen ended up in Italian football. 'When he [Eriksson] was at Roma and Lazio, he had so many big stars - 16 or 17 of them - that he had to put four or five on the bench, but he had the ability to explain to these players why they were not playing. It meant that, while they might not accept it themselves, they didn't go out and moan to the papers,' says Hysen. 'The first thing he did at Lazio was to put [Beppe] Signori on the bench and he was their biggest star. There was only a bit of moaning from the fans, who couldn't understand why. When Lazio started winning, they understood it better.'
Such is the regard that Eriksson is held in at home that Hysen believes a few Swedes will even be cheering for England when the teams meet today. He describes the game as 'a massive thing' for the Swedish people, much bigger than the other group matches against Argentina and Nigeria. 'We've been brought up with English football in Sweden - every Saturday for 35, 40 years we've seen a live match - so everybody loves the English game. This couldn't be any bigger.'
Hysen regards England as narrow favourites in a low-scoring game - if he were a betting man he would gamble on 1-0 - and fancies Argentina and England to go into the second stage. He sees Michael Owen and Freddie Ljungberg as the key players, although he is concerned that Ljungberg may suffer a reaction from his exertions for Arsenal. 'He's been so good that I don't think things can get any better. I hope they can, but there's more chance he could go the other way. There have been so many games in England, he might be totally empty.'
Even if Ljungberg is fit and at his best, Hysen still sees Sweden's midfield as their main weakness, defensively sound but without the passers to supply the forwards, Celtic's Henrik Larsson and Marcus Allback, who signed last week for Aston Villa.
Ljungberg on form could, though, exploit what Hysen regards as England's vulnerability out wide in defence. 'In the past England have had good full-backs, but before Eriksson announced his side the only name I could come up with was Ashley Cole and he's been up and down.'
The underdog factor may also work in Sweden's favour, says Hysen. 'When we play against the big European or South American teams we are the underdogs and we are good at that. If we take a point or win that's fantastic. Look at the World Cup in 1994 - we ended up in third place. If Germany are third, it's a disaster. In Sweden we had a big party after that [1994], we celebrated for weeks.'
Unlike Sweden, the extent of England's ambition can, justifiably, stretch all the way to the title, says Hysen. And if they were to emulate Bobby Moore's 1966 side, he believes that Eriksson would take his leave of Soho Square, partly because there would be nothing more to achieve after winning the World Cup, but also because he has missed the daily contact with players that a coach gets at club level. He would stay otherwise, though, 'because he signed for five years and I think he's still got it in his head that he's going to build up a good team over those five years'.
Which is fair enough, and probably fine by Adam Crozier and his staff at the Football Association, but it's helpful to remember that just because Eriksson has this thing in his head doesn't make him anything more than just another football manager: flesh, blood and one indiscretion away from ridicule in the tabloids.
