Sven-Goran Eriksson, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, gets the chance to tell his colourful life story on camera in Sven on Prime Video Sven Goran Eriksson former Lazio coach prior the Serie A match between SS Lazio and AS Roma at Stadio Olimpico on March 19, 2023 in Rome, Italy. (Photo by Marco Rosi - SS Lazio/Getty Images) Sven-Goran Eriksson has been given a year to live due to pancreatic cancer. Photo: Prime Video Manager of England Sven Goran Eriksson applauds prior to the FIFA World Cup Germany 2006 Quarter-final match between England and Portugal played at the Stadium Gelsenkirchen on July 1, 2006 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.
(Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images) Whom the gods would destroy, they first make England football manager. Or that’s how it’s always seemed. Of the 15 men, excluding caretakers, who have managed the England side from 1946 to the present day, few emerged from the position without battle scars.
The greatest of them all, Alf Ramsey, who won the country its only World Cup to date in 1966, was treated appallingly by the FA, crumpled up and tossed away like a sheet of wastepaper when he should have been given a top executive position within the organisation. Sven - Official trailer Gareth Southgate managed to leave on his own terms, his legacy burnished by reaching the final of Euro 2024 — but not before having to endure being abused by the fans and vilified by the tabloids and TV punters, most notably Gary Lineker. There’s been no shortage over the years of documentaries looking from the outside at the various triumphs and failures of England football managers.
Sven (Prime Video, from Friday, August 23) is the first to give the man at the centre of the storm — and when you’re England manager, there’s always a storm — the opportunity to tell it like it really was. For Sven-Goran Eriksson, this is the last chance he’ll have to tell his story on camera. He’s dying of pancreatic cancer and has been given a year, at most, to live.
Filmed at his striking home in Varmland in Sweden, Eriksson moves slowly, sometimes with the assistance of his daughter Lina and son Johan, and his face looks puffy from the medication he’s taking. But he insists he’s feeling no pain and seems to be as philosophical about his plight as anyone can be in his position. “I’ve had a good life,” he says at one point, yet he has bittersweet feelings about his time managing England.
Directed by Claudia Corbisiero, who also made Bobby Robson: More Than a Manager, it’s far from a perfect film. It’s uneven and sometimes frustratingly sketchy in its handling of certain details of the story. If it were a football match, you’d describe it as choppy.
Then again, there’s an awful lot in Eriksson’s story to get through — not least his busy sex life, which included affairs with Ulrika Jonsson and FA secretary Faria Alam, conducted behind the back of his partner Nancy Dell’Olio, who appears here. His rise in football from a rather ordinary player (he retired at just 27) to a highly successful manager was meteoric and is given due attention. He guided Gothenburg, a team of part-timers, to the 1982 UEFA Cup final, where they beat Hamburg.
Sven-Goran Eriksson has been given a year to live due to pancreatic cancer. Photo: Prime Video Before he took the England job in 2001, he’d won 18 trophies with a variety of clubs in Sweden, Portugal and Italy. Not that this counted for anything in insular England, where Eriksson, who was the first foreigner to fill the job, was treated with suspicion.
There’s an extraordinary clip from his first press conference, where the atmosphere was one of thinly-veiled hostility. The general attitude of the journalists quizzing him was: “What makes a foreigner like you think you can do a better job than an Englishman?” He seems to be as philosophical about his plight as anyone can be in his position They quickly changed their minds after Eriksson’s first match in charge: a 5-1 win over Germany. “Maybe it would have been better to win 1-0,” says Eriksson, reflecting on the hysteria that followed.
The players felt differently about their new boss. “I loved him from day one,” says David Beckham, who was impressed by Ericksson’s attitude and the refreshingly different way he handled players. Manager of England Sven Goran Eriksson applauds prior to the FIFA World Cup Germany 2006 Quarter-final match between England and Portugal played at the Stadium Gelsenkirchen on July 1, 2006 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.
(Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images) Wayne Rooney, who Ericksson picked for the first team when he was just 17, choked up when recalling how the manager protected him after England’s exit from the 2006 World Cup was blamed on the red card he’d received in the quarter-final against Portugal. “Don’t kill him,” Eriksson pleaded with the press. Sven is not a hagiography.
It doesn’t cut him any slack with regard to his less than honourable behaviour towards the women in his life. At the same time, it’s damning about the English tabloid culture typified by the loathsome News of the World, which tapped Eriksson’s phone and duped him into the “fake sheikh” sting that resulted in him being sacked from the England job. There’s a tea-spitting moment when former NOTW deputy editor Neil Wallis describes Eriksson as “amoral”.
He can talk. Sven will be available to watch on Prime Video on Friday 23 August. Join the Irish Independent WhatsApp channel Stay up to date with all the latest news.
