Värmland, in western Sweden, is a place of tranquil, ice-blue lakes and a million tall, sharp trees. The landscapes are quiet and vast, the pace of existence slow. It is the ideal environment in which to reflect and, for Sven-Göran Eriksson, now 76, it is where he was born and where he will die. Sven, a feature-length documentary about the football coach, meets him before and after he receives a terminal cancer diagnosis. This knowledge, set against the crisp beauty of Eriksson’s home country, lends Sven a profundity that most sports biographies can’t reach for – but there is plenty to laugh and scream at in a beguiling, multi-faceted film.
First, we chart Eriksson’s unlikely journey from rural Scandinavia to the higher levels of world football. After an average playing career, he cut a tremendously unconvincing figure as the surprise new coach of IFK Gothenburg in 1979, standing hunched and wan during an early training session. By 1982, however, Gothenburg had won the Uefa Cup and Eriksson was hired by big clubs in Portugal and Italy, his innovative tactics and unusually calm touchline presence making him a cult figure as well as a serial trophy winner.
In 2001, he landed the job of England manager, the biggest gig of his career and the period of his life that takes up most of the film. This was the ultimate test of the skills Eriksson had accrued during a lifetime of learning and competing, but it soon became clear that public opinion of him would not be defined by a fair assessment of his work. He became a target for the uniquely toxic British tabloids and, in footage of his first press conference as England boss, we see this realisation dawn. When he first sits down he is jovial and energised; after a long session of insubstantial, disrespectful questioning, he looks appalled and defensive.
We recap the triumphs and disappointments of Eriksson’s England side, from the celebrated 5-1 win away against Germany and the injury-time David Beckham free kick against Greece that secured qualification for the 2002 World Cup (at his unpretentious but lovely waterside home, Eriksson has a large framed photo of Becks about to kick that ball), to a series of near misses in international tournaments. The film is, however, not that interested in debating whether Eriksson could have done better with the players at his disposal. Instead, it picks through the way he personally was treated, and what were deemed to be major scandals relating to his private life. The press were ecstatic to learn that the placid, bespectacled, balding Eriksson was dating forcefully stylish Italian socialite Nancy Dell’Olio, who is introduced here zipping through the Puglia countryside in a scarlet, open-topped sports car. “I was the first lady of English football,” she says, fabulous self-affirming twinkle still intact. “Never going to be another one.”
Journalists were even more delighted when they discovered Eriksson had cheated on Dell’Olio with TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson, and again with Football Association staffer Faria Alam – both stories being afforded huge amounts of coverage on the understanding that the unmarried Eriksson’s behaviour was deeply immoral and highly relevant to his job. The film’s artfully chosen archive nuggets show a media in hypocritical overdrive. In a blizzard of reporting and chat – Huw Edwards is glimpsed, soberly informing BBC viewers about a man in disgrace – there is a stunning clip of Alam being confronted by an interviewer who calls her “an ambitious good-time girl” to her face.
Jonsson doesn’t appear in Sven, but Alam does. She gives a good interview, rueful and bewildered but dignified and defiant too, and not averse to tossing out titbits of gossip: apparently Eriksson’s opening gambit was to shake her hand, look her in the eye and whisper, “Wow.”
What of the old smoothie himself? Cutting back to the peace of Värmland, we wait for Eriksson’s soul-searching regrets, but he barely offers any. “Sex is one of many good things in life,” he says, palms upturned towards the camera. He was affected and annoyed by press intrusion, but wouldn’t take lessons on acceptable conduct from tabloid reporters, and isn’t going to offer explanations or apologies now if he doesn’t feel like it. Although he is self-critical when necessary – he admits his obsession with football meant he spent too little time with his children as they grew up – his refusal to accept the shame allocated to him by bogus moral arbiters is invigorating.
There are lovely scenes observing Eriksson and his now grownup kids pottering happily while helping each other prepare for the sadly inevitable. And when he has finished looking back on his unbelievable adventures, Eriksson looks down the lens and sums up his liberating philosophy on the ups and downs of a life properly lived. “Don’t be sorry,” he says. “Smile.”
• Sven is on Prime Video.
