'I did nothing wrong': Sven-Goran Eriksson's blast from beyond grave

In early February 2023, I collapsed after jogging five kilometres. Up until that point, I had been ­perfectly healthy – at least I felt I was. Then the doctors told me I had had a stroke and that I also had pancreatic cancer.

Its course could be slowed down but no operation was ­possible. My days were numbered.

When I got the news, right smack in the face, I was hit by terrible anxiety but since then I’ve fooled my brain. It’s very seldom I think about death now. I don’t sit here pondering what that will mean, what happens when it ends.

I’ve always thought that it’s a good idea to see the positive things in life, no matter how tough things get.

I don’t want to be that person who gets depressed and feels sorry for himself. Instead, I have tried to live life as usual.

But I’ve also thought a great deal about how I should deal with the illness. Should I say that it isn’t anything special, that it’s just the flu? Should I mask how I feel? Or should I simply go out and say that this is the way it is?

I wanted to avoid speculation and I decided early on that the best solution would be just to tell the truth. At the same time, it was important to ask the media and others to respect the fact that my illness is something highly private, something that primarily concerns me and my family.

In early 2023, I made my first public comment about my health: ‘I, Sven-Goran Eriksson, have chosen to temporarily limit my public commitments, owing to problems with my health, which are now under investigation. I’m now focusing on my health, my family, and limited engagements with Karlstad Fotboll, etc.’

Nearly a year later, in the car on the way to a radio interview, I finally made that decision to reveal my illness. Then the whole world knew.

I will never again train a football team. At first, that thought scared me silly.

Football is a poison, a highly addictive one. It’s as if the sport has killed off all other interests in my life.

In the summer of 1977, I was invited to join the Swedish Football Federation’s trainer programme. Then 29, I was engaged to my future wife Anki and I had to cancel our wedding, which was planned for the day after the course started.

It was a disaster. ‘We’ll be able to change the date, won’t we?’ I attempted. But it was worse than I expected. There were tears and phone calls to my future in-laws. It’s not a popular thing to move a wedding, far from it. Anki said: ‘I actually should ask you whether you choose me or your damned course, but I won’t.’

The day I lost £8m

There have been a few times in my life when I’ve felt badly taken advantage of and the worst concerned Samir Khan, a financial adviser whom I entrusted with investing my money wisely.

In 2008, after about a year of using his services, I was warned that everything was not as it should be with him. But I didn’t take that seriously. I was a gullible idiot and let him do whatever he wanted, including buying a house in Barbados in my name and then taking out a loan with the house as security.

Khan told me that he could invest the money raised and get a good return but when he suggested that we do the same with the homes I owned in Portugal and Sweden, I started wondering why it was so important for him to take out loans on all my properties.

I only refused because of a gut feeling I had and while it’s hard to tell if he acted with purpose, or just out of gross negligence and stupidity, he lost me roughly £8million and almost forced me into bankruptcy.

It might sound simplistic and happy-go-lucky, but it wasn’t in my genes to get depressed and destroyed by what ­happened with Khan. I don’t think about it today. What good would that do?­

I felt dumb once I understood what had happened but I’ve never been interested in money.

My marriage to Anki lasted nearly 20 years and we had two children, a son Johan and a daughter Lina.

During those years, I’d graduated from training IFK Goteborg in the Swedish premier division to managing Benfica in Lisbon and then the Italian clubs Roma, Fiorentina and Sampdoria — the latter based in Genoa.

By the time we arrived there in 1992, things weren’t rosy at home. Our marriage had been rickety for a long time.

I was working long hours and coming home later and later in the evening, but I had also met Graziella Mancinelli, a researcher at a laboratory. We saw each other more and more, and Anki found out about it. That was the final nail in the coffin and we divorced in 1994. It took a heavy load and it was nasty.

When I was appointed the first foreign manager of the England team in 2001, I came to appreciate some personal advice from Kevin Keegan, one of my immediate predecessors.

Invited to his home for tea and scones, I received lots of ­encouragement and was privy to his own experiences, but I got only one concrete piece of advice: ‘Move to Paris!’ That way I would be able to avoid all the paparazzi. In London I would never be able to lead a normal life.

Given how things later turned out, I probably should have.

None of the ‘scandals’ I wound up involved in had anything to do with the football played by the 11 players I sent on to the pitch and I would never have dreamt that there would be such an uproar about my so-called ‘affairs’.

Of course, I did date women I wasn’t married to, but that’s something many men do. I wasn’t married myself, so it actually wasn’t a big deal. I was a grown man who met grown women who knew what they were doing.

In my opinion, I didn’t do anything wrong. That’s what I thought then, and that’s what I think now but all hell broke loose. I could dominate both the front and back pages of the tabloids for several weeks. I was everywhere, and that wasn’t where I should have been, considering my job.

The Press even sent their spies all the way to my home county of Varmland. Once, Dad played a prank on the reporters, hiding some full rubbish bags under a blanket on the rear seat of the car so they’d suspect it was me lying there, concealed.

Then he drove away with four cars following him to the dump where, to the dismay of the ­journalists, he took the bin bags out of the rear seat.

Back in England, chaos reigned whenever I went. My daughter Lina attended Norwich University ­during that period, and she never told her friends or teachers who her dad was.

Once I visited her and suggested that we go out shopping for clothes. That was a major ­mistake. Instantly people began to gather outside and point at me through the window. Soon the entire shop was packed with people, and I had to apologise to the staff.

My move to England coincided with the final phase of my relationship with Italian lawyer Nancy Dell’Olio. Officially we lived together in London, but the truth was that I had moved out and kept up appearances by occasionally living in our shared flat.

In early 2002, I had also started secretly dating TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson, a fellow Swede.

It was nothing serious but the FA brought in a media expert who said there was no chance of nipping the story in the bud. I was too famous, and Ulrika too.

‘We’ll just let this one peter out,’ was his recommendation.

It did ebb away after a while, but it was rough while it lasted. Then a new tide came in when two years later I started seeing Faria Alam, an FA secretary.

Read More

Inside Sven's chaotic year at Man City: Two fake deaths and a squad who went on strike to save him

The story had the added spice of the then CEO of the FA, Mark Palios, also having had an affair with Faria.

When rumours started flying about Faria’s relationship with Palios, the FA’s press officer Colin Gibson told me that the problem could be resolved if I granted the News of the World a personal interview in which I talked about my relationship with Faria.

Palios’s name, on the other hand, would not be mentioned. I was to be sacrificed to save his skin.

I told Gibson that he was a son of a b****. Ultimately, both Gibson and Palios had to leave their jobs: Gibson because he had tried to obscure Mark Palios’s role in the matter.

I’ve been asked many times whether I regret meeting Faria Alam and Ulrika Jonsson. Well, if I had known what it would lead to, I might have called it all off. But in purely ethical terms, I don’t understand why I shouldn’t be able to have a relationship with whoever I want.

But one of the hardest things to deal with was the end of my career as England manager. Around that time Nancy and I also finally ended our relationship. I didn’t have any steady relations after the break-up, but I did meet a lot of women.

It wasn’t that they functioned as consolation when I was feeling down, because what I was missing was not a relationship. It was football. I missed being in the limelight, I missed the social aspects – and I missed the feeling of winning football matches.

Overnight, I went from sitting on the bench for England in the World Cup, to sitting in my newly renovated home overlooking Lake Fryken.

I’d bought it when I was still with Nancy, shortly after England’s exit from the World Cup in 2002. I spent that summer at home in Varmland and one night, together with family and friends, we booked a steamboat for a tour of the lake.

As we glided through the water, I saw a ­beautiful white manor house and immediately thought: ‘Wow, what a place!’

Someone mentioned that the couple living there were having ­trouble making ends meet and later that evening we pulled up to the landing and I knocked on the door. It was the middle of the night and I was not exactly sober as the owner opened it and I told him that I wanted to buy his house.

My last meal with Becks

One of ‘my’ players, who I’m still in contact with, is David Beckham, who was team ­captain, my right-hand man, during my years as England manager.

We had an extremely good relationship during my time with England, and Beckham is Beckham. He’s an incredibly fine person.

Since I left that job, we’ve met now and again, and we talk regularly.

When I made my diagnosis public earlier this year, he called a few days later and said: ‘I’d like to come and visit you, if I may.’ Of course he could.

He arrived in his private jet at Karlstad Airport, about an hour’s drive from my home.

He brought with him his own chef – in fact he sent the chef one day ahead. The meal was herring and potatoes and elk meat, following my wishes. We had one aquavit, a Scandinavian spirit, each. It was a highly relaxing moment and I truly appreciated his visit.

Of course we talked about football, but we also covered much more during David’s three-hour visit.

What we said shall remain within us, and only us, as always between trainer and player.

‘Don’t you think this could wait until the morning?’ was his response.

Nancy was with me the next day as we took a tour of the house. We sat on the steps, and the sun was shining as we closed the deal. I was obsessed: this is where I wanted to be and I haven’t regretted it.

In the years after leaving ­England I managed teams all over the world, including Mexico where I met Yaniseth Alcides, a dancer from Panama. After many years of remote dating, she now lives with me at Bjorkefors.

Every day I soak up the beautiful view with the prominent profile of Tossebergsklatten mountain between the shimmer of the lake and the sunset in the west.

Here I’m always the same ­person I was before, with roots in the Swedish countryside. And with my feet on a football pitch — as a little boy I could never have imagined that I would one day make a living out of the game which for me will always be number one.

I didn’t come from a wealthy family and, when I was born in February 1948, I was definitely not ‘planned’.

Dad was only 18 or 19 at the time. He sold tickets on the bus on which Mum, who was three years older, travelled to her job in the nearby town of Torsby every day. And, of course, they took a liking to each other as they travelled the country roads.

Dad was always ashamed of how he behaved when I was born. He didn’t tell his parents when I came along – I don’t think they even knew he and Mum were together – and he always had a guilty conscience about that.

For two years I was kept secret from them, living in a one-bedroom flat with Mum. The building had only one toilet, which was shared by five or six families, and there was no shower.

‘I was as damned immature as a person can be when I became a father,’ says my dad, even today.

When Dad eventually moved in with us, we lived in a flat in Torsby. It had one room and a kitchen for Mum, Dad, me and later my little brother, Lars-Erik, ‘Lasse’. I had to sleep on the kitchen sofa. It was pretty crowded.

It was at this time that football first entered my life through games with lads from the ­surrounding blocks. We played seven-on-seven on a gravel pitch. My ‘team’ often came last in ­tournaments. We were lousy.

Later, I played for the local team. In Torsby, we believed we would become better footballers the more we ran up and down a local hill.

We did it until we were sick. ’Good,’ said the coach while we stood there sobbing.

In the locker room before one of my first matches, I felt I needed the lavatory, which was at the far end of the pitch. When I excused myself, the team manager said: ‘Don’t go. You’ll run much faster if you haven’t p*****.’

This diagnosis is the greatest setback, of course, but I’m convinced that the earlier you accept your condition, the better it will be.

It would be so easy to get bogged down in negative, bitter thoughts, but you need to combat those thoughts. Dispel them.

Broadly speaking, I’m fairly good at that. Socialising with people is one way to head off darkness, exercising is another. And I read more now than in the past. Sometimes I long for evening to fall, so I’ll be able to read my book.

Since I fell ill, since I found out that I’m dying, I’ve thought that it’s largely a matter of carrying on as long as I can.

It’s true that dark thoughts do emerge as well, but obviously the struggle has been easier for me, with everyone having been so kind since I told them about my illness.

This year, I’ve done what my friend Bengt has described as a ‘royal progress’, from one ­European football metropolis to another: Liverpool, Lisbon, ­Gothenburg, Genoa, Degerfors, and of course Torsby.

I never could have dreamt that I would be able to travel to so many places, arenas and clubs that shaped me. To stand in the centre one last time.

It’s wonderful, beautiful, fun, and my eyes have indeed teared up as I’ve stood in the middle of pitch after pitch and heard the applause and all the praise for my leadership and my way of being. Every person should have such an opportunity to strengthen their self-confidence. As I see it, if you don’t get a kick out of 60,000 people in the stands singing your name, then you will never get a kick.

Everywhere I’ve felt like a king, and it’s helped me to reflect about what I have actually achieved as a coach. Hearing all these fine things while I’m still alive is a blessing, a gift. I wish to be remembered as an honest ­person, as a good person, ­whatever that may be.

It’s not easy to talk about the end coming. But I’m trying to be as realistic as I can acceptably be. I know what disease I have, and I know there’s no cure.

It can only be slowed down. I had to realise that there’s only one direction this can go.

When my grown-up children, Lina and Johan, visit we don’t spend much time talking about my illness. It slithers in once in a while, but it’s not something we dwell on.

‘Don’t go around feeling sorry for me – let’s live the way we always have,’ I’ve said to them. And we do, as well as ever we can.

‘Life is short, it’s true, but if you live it right, it’s plenty,’ some wise person once said.

Consoling words indeed.

• Adapted from A Beautiful Game by Sven-Goran Eriksson (Michael Joseph, £25), published on October 17. © Sven-Goran Eriksson & Bengt Berg, 2024, translation © Donald Macqueen, 2024. To order a copy for £21.25 (offer valid to 19/10/24; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.