Joe Lovejoy - Sven-Goran Eriksson

Eriksson works on accentuating the positive and eliminating this fear of failure, in the belief that mental strength is ultimately decisive. He reasons: ‘If you look at the top footballers, playing ability among many of them is very even. We can’t train more than we do, we’re already at the maximum that players can take nowadays, so it is mental differences which will decide who the real winners are.’

From day one at Lazio, and again with England, he had set out to break down the mental barriers that prevented players from going beyond the limit of what they believed was possible. ‘We often find it difficult, both intellectually and emotionally, to accept a sufficiently high level for our performance,’ he says. ‘We dare not pass our upper limit and reach our maximum. We have an inner mental barrier that stops us from succeeding, and have to break through the barriers we mentally erect that prevent us from using all our resources. For a long time, it was considered impossible to run a mile under four minutes, but then Roger Bannister did so, and it was not long before a number of other runners managed it. Bannister showed that it was permitted to run that quickly. Any breaking through such barriers has to be done first in the mind. The mind must prepare the way for the body.’

He invited the England players to try a mental exercise. They were to think about the phrases ‘I must’, ‘I should’, and ‘I’ve got to’. Then think of ‘I want to’, ‘I’ll have a go’, and ‘I can’. He explained: ‘It is fairly natural that we will not perform as well if we are forced to do something, rather than being free to do the same thing. It is also true that many sportsmen feel an unexpressed compulsion from their environment to reach certain goals. A typical example of the wrong type of thinking is the thought: “I mustn’t miss.” Close your eyes, relax and imagine you are in a match that is coming up. You see yourself on the pitch and you think: “Must, should, got to”. How do you feel? Don’t you feel that your personality withers and your mood sinks? After a moment or two, repeat the exercise, but think instead: “I want to”, “I’ll have a go”, “I can”. You immediately feel better, you’re practically raring to go.’

On less esoteric lines, Eriksson articulates his managerial style as follows: ‘First of all, the leader must be a complete master of what he is going to teach others, and he must also dare to be himself. Don’t try to be somebody else, or you will be found out very quickly. I would feel extremely stupid if I were to stand at the bench screaming and whistling at the players and the referee.

‘There must always be a target, or goal, and clear lines: “This is the way I want you to play football.” As a leader, you must be clear in what you say and explain everything to the group so that they really understand what you have in mind. When you have come that far, only one thing remains, and that may well be the most difficult one: having everybody in the team accept it. The important thing is having everyone understand that this is an agreement. Everybody must be moving in the same direction.

‘You have to be generous with praise, but in sport the big reward is the event itself. That’s where sport is simple and straightforward – win or lose, reward or punishment. You must set your goals high, but they must be realistic ones. You cannot go around promising titles if the material at your disposal is not good enough to do it. There is also the matter of fingertip feeling and intuition, which I think all good bosses have. When, as a coach, you have a team which is a goal or two down at half-time, you have to do something about it. Often it comes down to changing one or two players. It is a decision which seldom has a logical basis, but something has to be done. It does not always change the outcome of a game, but if it works, you will be called a genius.’

So is he a genius? He smiled at the suggestion. ‘A bit of modesty does not hurt. During the success of the past few years, more than once I have had to pinch myself. Then I say: “Hey there, Sven, you were born in Torsby.” By remembering your origins you get the proportions right in life.’

Sven-Goran Eriksson spends nearly every Christmas at the parental home in Torsby, and if you saw the place you wouldn’t blame him. To visit this sleepy, snowy Swedish village in winter is to be put in mind of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas idyll, and to wonder how anybody could ever leave.

Sven-Goran was born on 5 February 1948, while the rest of the world was preoccupied with Gandhi’s assassination and the gathering crisis in Berlin. He was the first child for Sven senior, a 19-year-old bus conductor, and Ulla, who supplemented the family income with a variety of jobs, which took her behind the counter at the village newsagent and later to the local hospital, as an auxiliary.

Torsby these days is ‘New England’ in more ways than one, a postcard-pretty collection of clapboard houses surrounded by frozen forest and lakes. Originally a centre for iron production, drawing on power from the Klaralven, or Clear river, there is no industry to speak of now. There is a high-tech, state-of-the-art sawmill, owned by the Finns, and a small electronics plant, but the main employer is the hospital. With a population of 5,000, the village is the municipality for the northern part of the mostly wooded picturesque province of Varmland, which measures some 200 km in length. The region prospers on two tourist seasons, catering for all the usual winter sports and summer activities like canoeing and rafting. Lake Vanern, the largest in Scandinavia, is a magnet for anglers, while for wildlife enthusiasts there are elk and wolves in abundance. The wolf is Varmland’s official emblem.

It is against this bucolic background that young Sven, or ‘Svennis’ as he was quickly to become known, was raised. He grew up in a small, working-class home – so small that a lounge-diner-kitchenette was the main living room. A neighbour recalled: ‘They weren’t poor, but they had hard times. There were not many luxuries.’ It was a close family, in every sense, and the England coach still talks to his parents on the telephone every day.

Ski jumping, with a club called SK Bore, was his passion more than football when he was very young. He told me: ‘I learned from the age of five, and became quite good at it. With the club, I travelled all over Varmland, and into Norway, for competitions. It is a sport you have to start when you are very young, and have no fear. You’d never dare to have a go when you were older. The trouble was, when I was little they didn’t have skis for kids, we had to use adult ones. To get mine to the top of the slope, ready to push off, I had to carry them up one at a time. They were very heavy for a little boy, much too heavy to take two.’ In common with all the other children making their first jump, the diminutive Svennis started at 15 ft, before eventually working his way up to 65. ‘I loved it,’ he says, ‘but by the age of 15 I had to choose between ski jumping and football, and football won.’

The extremes in Swedish society made him a young socialist of the old school. ‘When I was young, I was far out on the left politically. I thought everything was unfair then. I was never politically active, but I was radical in my opinion.’ A friend from his teenage days said: ‘One of his dreams, when he was 19 or 20, was to move to South America, buy a plantation there and be nice to the workers, paying them well. He wanted to be a philanthropist.’

Charity had its limits, however. Sven’s brother Lars, eight years his junior, recalls how Sven always had to beat him at everything, irrespective of the age difference. ‘He was very competitive, even when I was little.’