Sven-Göran Eriksson, “Svennis”, is one of Sweden’s most successful football coaches. He broke through when he won the Uefa Cup with IFK Gothenburg in 1982. Sven-Göran Eriksson has also been the national team captain for England’s national team and taken the team to the quarter finals in the World Cup in 2002 and in the European Championships in 2004.
The role as England’s national team captain was not always easy, says Sven-Göran Eriksson in “Summer in P1”. Just after he gets the role, he meets Tony Blair, the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who says that they will bet on who would keep their job the longest.
– We have two impossible jobs and the only ones we know are that sooner or later we will be fired. He won the bet by one year, I was fired earlier than he got, says “Svennis”.
“Did not want to disappoint me”
Sven-Göran Eriksson has a close relationship with David Beckham, who was team captain during “Svennis” time in the English national team. A few years after his time as league captain, he tried to recruit Beckham to his Leicester, which he then coached.
– David is a kind, shy and humble guy and probably did not want to disappoint me. He said that he probably had to think about it a bit, he says.
David Beckham’s wife Victoria, on the other hand, went straight to the point.
– She looked at me from top to bottom and asked: “Sven can you see me in Leicester”?
“Svennis” admits that it may not really fit and reproduces David Beckham’s concluding words:
– David stated dryly: “Sven, not even Madrid was” Posh enough “when we lived there. “, Says Sven-Göran Eriksson.
Criticizes the 51 percent rule
Sven-Göran Eriksson criticizes the so-called 51 percent rule which means that the football clubs in Sweden may not be owned by a majority owner, they must for the most part be associations.
– I can not understand why we in football in football should not pay salaries to players as is done in Scotland, Belgium and so on. This applies to both women’s and men’s football. The big clubs in Europe invest a lot in women’s football. It will end up that we do not have a single player in the women’s national team who plays in Sweden, as on the men’s side.
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