Sven-Goran Eriksson

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The World Cup is the biggest party in football and it's a party for the world, it's incredible. It goes for a month and there is a huge amount of interest. It's the greatest thing you can do and it's beautiful.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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I've always been a Liverpool fan.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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Football is important, football is my life, I love it but life is more important than football.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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I liked friendly games, but I took them like a test to test new players. People didn't like that very much.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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England was the biggest coaching job that I had. You know, in England, the football is connected to all the things in a incredible way. I'm very proud to have been there.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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My worst moment was in 2006, in Germany, without any doubt! The defeat in the knockout phase of the World Cup 2006 against Portugal.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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Italian footballers can take a coffee and sit for two hours talking, laughing.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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China, if they decide to do something, they do it. Not only in football but whatever it is. If you think about the billion population, there must be Messis or Ronaldos out there. There must be many talented football players out there.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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To be a manager, you have to perform always. You cannot live in history. It's now and tomorrow that counts.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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The pressure on the English national team has always been very big at all the big tournaments.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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It's not that India, China and the United States need football, but football needs these three countries. Because it will be even bigger.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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How many Messis do you have in India if they had the chance to play?
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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When I was in Italy in the 90s, early 2000s, everybody wanted to go to Italy, all the players.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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If you want to keep up with the changes, then you have to watch as much football as you can. Live is the best way but also on television. All the best teams: Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and now City. What are they doing? If possible, go and see them training. You can always learn.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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Serie A was the best league in the world when Roma offered me the job of manager in 1984.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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My second year in Rome was very good. Back then, a striker was a striker. Strikers scored goals; they didn't defend. Today this is normal, but it wasn't at that time. If you wanted to play my style of football you couldn't have old players or famous players who were unwilling to do the job both ways: attacking and also defending.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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After three years with Roma, I spent two seasons at Fiorentina. I could have stayed there for longer, but they only had ambitions to be in the middle of the table - not to win anything. Their ambition was to not go down.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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From 1997 I was at Lazio for three and a half years and they were lucky times - a beautiful time. The chairman did almost everything I asked. We won seven trophies and were excellent.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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England has always been famous for great goalkeepers, before I came. We had good goalkeepers, but we didn't have the big world-class 'keeper, maybe.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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The player picked as No 23 in the squad will not win the World Cup for you.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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If my style is typically Swedish, I don't know. But I never shouted in all my life at players and I never did it at my children.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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With England, every time we lost I was 'not passionate.' But I tried to say we won a lot of games when I was the same.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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Sir Alex Ferguson must be very high up on the list of greatest managers ever. Then there is Fabio Capello, and people forget how much Giovanni Trapattoni achieved at Inter and especially Juventus.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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Sometimes things go wrong in 'football. You can lose games, own-goals, you can buy the wrong players. But you do it in the right spirit and you do it honestly. That is not how it went wrong at Notts County.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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You know if you go far in the World Cup you are away for almost two months and I think it's against human nature, not to have families there.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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I have a big TV screen and I sit there and watch the Premier League and I get angry sometimes - 'I'm better than that guy sitting there.' Of course, I am joking. But I analyse. I look at it technically, how they play, how they defend, how they attack, why did he change that player? That's the only way I can look at it after all these years.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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I must say, the standard of football we play in League Two is better than I thought. I think, if you compared it with the fourth division in other countries, such as Italy, Germany and Spain, League Two is much, much better - and that's very positive. The intensity and the tempo is as high as the Premier League.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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I like challenges, yes.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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It's always nice to see Brazil playing football.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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I don't feel like I'm a failure for what I did with England. No I don't feel like that.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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Before England, I had never been sacked in my life.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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My private life has absolutely nothing to do with my football.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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I had a contract with England, it was going to finish, and in football you can't really wait until your contract runs out.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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I always thought I did a good job with England. But people at the time didn't think so. They had had enough of the Swedish guy only making the quarter-finals.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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I always treated my players like men.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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The big question for me is - are the players happy? Because in my mind it is all about building the right relationship with your players and creating the right atmosphere.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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If Rooney had been Italian, he would have been loved like Francesco Totti was at Roma.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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You don't criticise Totti in Italy. There might have been reasons to, sometimes, but you don't touch him.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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You look at the way some of the big English players in the past, like Rooney and David Beckham, have been criticised and you have to ask: 'What do you want these players to be?'
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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The treatment of Wayne Rooney told me something about the way England fans view the national team.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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I loved managing England more than anything but there were times during those five years when I thought, 'Why did I leave Italy?' because you are criticised so much.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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In Italy, so long as you are not criminal, they couldn't care less about your private life. It's when you lose a football match that they criticise you - a lot.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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When you go to a World Cup, the whole nation should be behind the team - and then the team have to play their part, too.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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Yes, England lost to Iceland at Euro 2016 but you need to look at what Iceland had, as well as what England didn't. Maybe Iceland were not technically strong but they looked very strong together and England were not the only ones surprised by them.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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When we fail at something it's because it needs work.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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My parents would make the journey across the border to Norway to buy butter and flour, staples that were cheaper there than in Sweden.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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To leave a job with a bad result is, I think, the worst thing in life to do. They will always remember you as a loser.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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No-one wants to finish a job badly. If you know that you are going to finish your job in six months, then you want to finish well.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
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The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.
- Sven-Goran Eriksson
Collection: Inspirational