Fifteen months ago your correspondent sat down with Sven-Goran Eriksson for a long chat-cum-interview. At that time, the man who last Wednesday opened his account as England football manager with a useful 3-0 home win against Spain, was working as coach to the Italian Serie A side, Lazio.
In the past 15 years in Italy, I had often come across Eriksson, sometimes interviewed him and, like everyone else, always found him to be courteous as well as invariably thought-provoking.
Sitting in his underground Lazio office on that December evening, my curiosity got the better of me. Recalling how two second-place finishes in Italian soccer (with Roma in 1986 and with Lazio in 1999) had earned him the Nice-Guy-But-Loser label in Italy, I asked him if that description ever got to him.
With a steely grin, Eriksson replied: "That sort of thing doesn't bother me any more. I know what I have done or not done."
If the British tabloid media feel that the first foreign manager of the England football team is likely to prove an easy target for thinly-veiled xenophobic criticism, they should perhaps think again. Eriksson (53) is indeed a nice guy, but he is neither an innocent nor a loser.
Those tabloids which have already decried his cosmopolitan elegance as Designer Scandinavian might soon learn that he can be Torsby Tough. Torsby is Eriksson's birthplace in Varmland, close to Sweden's border with Norway. This is an area renowned for its tranquil beauty, for its cross-country skiing and for its understated but determined people.
No one in Sweden has ever jeered Varmland or its sturdy inhabitants.
After a brief, and what he himself freely admits was a very modest, career as a lower-division player, Eriksson switched to coaching early. By the age of 29 he had already guided the Swedish Third Division side Degerfors to promotion in 1977.
That success earned him the coach's position (what passes for manager in English football jargon is invariably referred to as coach in the rest of the world) at Sweden's number one football club, IFK Gothenburg.
The former Fiorentina, Liverpool and Gothenburg player, Glenn Hysen, these days a TV commentator, recently recalled the players' surprise at the appointment. "We thought it was a joke to start with because he was small, shy and very quiet," he said. "He doesn't really look like a coach. . . We were surprised the club had gone for someone like that."
Four seasons later no one was surprised any more because Eriksson had proved his ability by winning both a Swedish championship and, significantly, the 1981 UEFA Cup, a European club competition which in those pre-Champions League days was very tough.
That success earned Eriksson a ticket right to the very top of European soccer, paving the way for 17 years spent first with Benfica in Portugal and then with the Italian clubs AS Roma, Fiorentina, Sampdoria and Lazio. What is more, Eriksson lifted the league title in both countries, three times with Benfica and last season with Lazio in Italy.
When Eriksson says he knows what he has done and not done, he is not joking. His CV puts him in a very exclusive club of proven winners, in places as culturally diverse as Lisbon, Rome and Gothenburg. If anyone was looking for a suave, cosmopolitan CEO, who also just happened to speak good English, then here was their man.
To widespread surprise, the English Football Association, after years of consistent England team failure under English managers, decided last autumn that they required precisely this cosmopolitan, non-British touch. Judged from a purely footballing viewpoint, and given the abysmal ineptitude of most England teams of the past 20 years, the choice was certainly not illogical.
Yet that choice inevitably hurt English pride, hurt those English fans and professionals who have long loved to refer to Association Football as the game England invented.
British tabloids whirred into gear, spewing out jingoistic garbage that occasionally lapsed into blatant racism. "England's humiliation knows no end. . . We've sold our birthright down the river to a nation of seven million skiiers and hammer-throwers who spend half their lives in darkness," declaimed the Daily Mail.
Gordon Taylor, chairman of the English Professional Footballers' Association, was hardly more welcoming when he said: "I think there will be tears at the end of the day. . . It is a very sad day for English football and a terrible indictment of our national association."
From a sociological point of view, the most interesting aspect of Eriksson's appointment was the negative reaction it engendered. Those of us who have long thought that hooligan behaviour by English fans abroad could find some of its roots in the inward-looking, isolationist and conservative mindset of some English football professionals were certainly treated to a large dollop of grist for our mills.
Fortunately, not all the reactions were negative. "Sven Can You Start, Boss?" asked the Daily Star. Furthermore, Eriksson has been greeted by standing ovations at English club grounds up and down the country. This is simply proof - if ever it were needed - that a majority of fans do not fall into a stereotypical, jingoist mode.
Perhaps the fans, unlike some of the game's commentators and practitioners, have noticed that in the past decade British cultural icons such as the Royal Opera House and the Tate Modern Gallery have benefited from a foreign influence. In a multicultural British society, this seems only natural. Why not in British football, then?
IN THE MIDST of the furore, and likewise after the overly enthusiastic media reaction to last Wednesday's good start to his new job, Sven-Goran Eriksson has been his usual cool-headed and skilfully diplomatic self. People are free to have opinions, he said, adding that he hoped to defend himself with good results.
Before Wednesday night, Eriksson had promised to give tangible expression to his Scandinavian fondness for his new home by singing all the words of God Save The Queen before the kick-off, a promise duly maintained. "I'll have to learn the words. I have no problem with that. I'm not a very good singer. That's the problem," he had said.
Eriksson may not be a good singer but he is a good football coach. He will prove well able to win the respect of his new England players. If results go against him, however, starting with World Cup qualifiers against Finland and Albania later this month, he may not receive quite so much respect from the tabloids.
The truth is, perhaps, that the major arguments used against Eriksson, past and future, have nothing to do with football and everything to do with prejudice. The debate engendered by his appointment would suggest that much of British football's sub-culture remains firmly entrenched in the 19th century.
Eriksson is sure to be able to teach (some) young Englishmen how to play better football. He may, however, prove unable to change the anachronistic, jingoist mindset of other Englishmen, young and old alike.
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