‘A small boy in a big jacket’ – how the manager made his mark

It was the autumn of 1980 and IFK Gothenburg had just been eliminated by Twente in the first round of the Uefa Cup when the board asked their young manager what was required to make progress in Europe. “I need three new players,” said a 32-year-old Sven-Göran Eriksson. “A goalkeeper, a left-back and a forward.”
The club could not afford the signings but such was the belief in Eriksson that several board members remortgaged their houses to free up the money. It was a huge gamble.
The previous year, Eriksson – a complete nobody at the time – had been put in charge of one of Sweden’s most famous clubs and it had led to a rare moment of self-doubt. Eriksson, who has died at the age of 76, claimed to have been nervous only once during his long career and that was before his first training session with Gothenburg. One of the players, the legendary Björn Nordqvist, had played 115 times for Sweden and was six years the manager’s senior.
Eriksson, meanwhile, had two seasons in charge of the third division side Degerfors under his belt. In the beginning the IFK players could not even get his name right, calling him Sven-Erik Göransson. “We looked at him and thought: ‘Is this little boy going to coach us?’” the former forward Torbjörn Nilsson told the podcast Änglarna last year. “He had this big jacket and looked so small and pale.”
Eriksson wrote in the book Svennis: My History: “In my previous club, Degerfors, I felt at home but here I was an outsider, a country boy in Sweden’s second biggest city. I looked at the players, the stars, standing in front of me, on the pitch. But then it hit me – many of them were from the countryside too. There was nothing to be afraid about.”
So the young coach set about implementing his ideas. They were fairly new to Sweden – including a 4-4-2 formation with high press and zonal marking – but the local media hated it. Blåvitt, as IFK are known, had a history of playing “Champagne football” and Eriksson’s style was considered dour and a betrayal of the club’s history.
Some players took to Eriksson’s methods immediately and those who did not were quickly moved on, such as Nordqvist and Ralf Edström. Eriksson may have been young at the time but he had already met people whose influences would stay with him for the rest of his career.
Tord Grip was one of them. The former Sweden international politely inquired whether Eriksson would consider “giving up a mediocre playing career” as a second division right-back to start working as a coach at the age of 27. Eriksson agreed and became Grip’s assistant at Degerfors, the start of a long and successful working relationship – and friendship – between the two.
After two seasons of missing out on promotion to the Swedish second tier via the playoffs, despite winning their division comfortably, Eriksson contacted the Norwegian mental coach Willi Railo.
It was something completely new to football and not appreciated by everyone. “A Norwegian psychologist, what the hell is this?” asked one of the players, but that year Degerfors were promoted and Eriksson continued to use Railo’s methods of positivity throughout his career (as well as a trick of how to fall asleep in 10 seconds).
Eriksson’s style of play was extremely structured. The goalkeeper played it to one of the full-backs, who had two options: play it short to the forward who came towards him or long to the forward who ran behind the opposition’s defence. The midfield was mainly there to win the ball if it had been lost.
And it worked. IFK came within a point of winning the league in Eriksson’s first season and then finished third in the following campaign. The 1981 season, however, started badly with three straight defeats, leading to some fans shouting “Send the bastard back to the forest” from the stands. He offered to resign. First to the board and then the players. Neither took up the offer.
At the end of the 1981 season – the Swedish top-flight Allsvenskan being played from spring to autumn – Gothenburg started their next campaign in Europe, now with the three signings Eriksson had been promised. Interest from fans was low but in the first three rounds they defeated the Finnish side Haka Valkeakoski, Sturm Graz and Dinamo Bucharest.
That led to a quarter-final against Valencia in March 1982, two months before the Swedish season was due to start. Amid financial turmoil, that tie was won 4-2 on aggregate, before Stig Fredriksson, one of the players bought with the money raised by the board members the previous year, settled the semi-final against Kaiserslautern with a penalty in extra time of the second leg.
It was an extraordinary achievement. All the Gothenburg players – apart from one, Nilsson – were semi-pro, working as plumbers, electricians and at youth clubs. In the final they were up against Hamburg, with seasoned Germany internationals – and full-time pros – such as Felix Magath, Manni Kaltz, Horst Hrubesch and Uli Stein. “I used to be so tired from getting up at 6am to start work and then go to training that I always fell asleep during Svennis’s tactical sessions,” the midfielder Tord Holmgren has admitted.
But Eriksson had instilled such belief in his team that they felt invincible. “No one thought we would win the final – apart from us,” Eriksson said. And win it they did: 1-0 at home and 3-0 away to complete the most memorable Swedish club success of all time.
Nilsson was the outstanding player that season, having regained his confidence after a failed spell at PSV. He credits Eriksson – and Railo – with getting his career back on track. “Sven-Göran should have a statue at Kamratgården [IFK’s training complex]. I started to go out to games thinking that the fans should be entertained. I was at my best when my mind was free and it was a feeling Svennis managed to create all the time. I was allowed to be myself, the person I was.”
Eriksson joined Benfica that summer, winning the league there before further title success in Italy with Lazio and five years in charge of England. Some of his methods never changed, including his proactive man-management style and the capacity to make the players feel involved and listened to. His ability to stay calm and confident whatever happened was also an asset.
As with every success story there was a price to pay. Eriksson has admitted that his thirst to succeed had a huge impact on family and friends, but insisted he never regretted the path he chose. He was far from flawless, but he was, and is, the most successful Swedish football coach ever. By a distance.