“Remarkable Man” Tributes Pour In For Former England Manager Sven-Goran Eriksson

yeah good morning I was just saying that Sor and Ericson live life to the full on and off the field as you alluded to and I think it takes quite a skill to be England manager and ignore all of the noise we had the iconic moment where David Beckham qualified England with that last minute free kick against Greece for the 2002 World Cup and there's a story by dii Haman that sums up Sven I think where he's lying on a Sun Lounge a bed and Sven walked out with a silver tray and there were two glasses of champagne and he handed one to DD Haman and Haman got up and said what are we celebrating and Sven just went life handed him the glass of champagne and walked away and that sums him up really huge personality big influence on football globally W countless trophies domestically but unfortunately just couldn't get that golden generation of England footballers to finally bring it home as we tend to use the phrase no but I think he his his record was wasn't bad was it I mean he won more games than he lost he got them s quarterfinals I suppose you might say Gareth Southgate did a bit better than that but he was a very pleasant man it seems to me and all the journalists that I know who dealt with him said that you know he was always willing to talk he never was in a bad mood he didn't do this kind of arson Wenger throwing of bottles and kicking of bottles the Alex Ferguson shouting and hairdyer treatment he was a very civilized sort of football manager wasn't he yeah he was calm he was able to ignore the noise he was able to separate the professional and the personal even though there were always a lot of headlines about him and he made time he remembered people's names there were these little touches although I have one sort of funny story where I met him in Dubai when he was technical director of a club called Al NASA working under Walter Zeno and I was the back of the press conference and he came in to be unveiled and he hugged me and I thought wow I obviously made a bigger impact than I thought on him and then after the press conference he called me into the office and I thought yikes did I ask a bad question and then he got a closer look at me and he went oh you're not Gareth Southgate so I got a hug because he thought I was Southgate but then because of that I got a one-on-one interview afterwards so he was extremely generous with his time and that's my personal memory and my interaction with Sven yes absolutely right and of course um football was a very different game back then wasn't it I mean it doesn't seem as though that's very long ago but actually is a lifetime ago in terms of the way football's changed yeah but I think he evolved and people will look at England and there was penalty heartaches so like you say the quarterfinals are not necessarily that representative but he had European and glory with gothenberg he won a Seria he managed all over the world so that's the sort of advantage of how he evolved and he took up different roles manager technical director International Football domestic and therefore by having such a footprint globally his impact on different coaches and the way in which he stayed modern were two sort of things that helped the Legacy so the evolution of the football coaching and that allowed him to adapt and keep getting work and then the Legacy and the influence on other coaches which will live on yeah absolutely right Ben good to talk to you thanks very much indeed Ben Jacobs there with an appreciation of s yur and ericon I think one of the more civilized people that's ever been involved in the football business

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