The 63-year-old Italian lawyer described the Swedish former England football manager as her “ex-husband”, while paying tribute to him on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, though the pair had not previously been thought to have been married. Eriksson died on Monday, surrounded by his family, at the age of 76, having revealed earlier this year that he had pancreatic cancer. Dell’Olio said she had hoped the pair would “get together for another dinner”, adding that she found it “hard pretending” he was not going to die.
Speaking as tears began to flow, Dell’Olio told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “When we (were) able to speak on the phone he was fine, because most of the time he was not answering or he said there was going to be some treatment. “Well, it’s hard pretending that you don’t know that he was about to die, and I never thought about that, because this is the thing about life (while) life is on you always believe there would be some sort of miracle, or I thought at the beginning that the doctors had made a mistake.” Dell’Olio went on to explain why she had stayed with Eriksson, between 1998 and 2002, despite affairs with TV personality Ulrika Jonsson and Football Association secretary Faria Alam, which attracted a huge amount of press attention during Eriksson’s time in charge of the national team.
She said: “First of all I made an important choice, I definitely didn’t want to regret the decision I made, and I knew that he was right. “It w.