Ivan Radford | On 28, Aug 2024

Director: Claudia Corbisiero
Cast: Sven-Göran Eriksson, David Beckham, Wayne Rooney
Certificate: 15

“I had a good life. Maybe too good. You have to pay the price.” Those are the words of the late Sven-Göran Eriksson, whose life is poignantly captured by an Amazon Prime Video documentary that arrived on our screens just 3 days before he passed away. It’s a thoughtful, warm portrait of one of the highest-profile figures in modern football.

Eriksson famously became the England manager in 2001, but the film starts away from these shores and in his home of Värmland, Sweden. It’s a tranquil place against a backdrop of stunning nature, and we find him in a reflective mood several months before he receives a terminal cancer diagnosis – but after he had five consecutive strokes that left the doctors talking to him in tears. The result is a meditative look back at a life and career that often seemed absurdly unlikely. We hear of how he unexpectedly ended up managing Gothenburg, before he ended up heading up multiple teams in Italy. His success there is what led him to become the first foreign man hired as the England boss.

His arrival at the start of the new millennium was met with all the tabloid scrutiny of the era, and we witness just how intense and unfair the media’s focus on him was in his first press conference alone. That focus intensified further when they found out about his behaviour off the pitch – first, his relationship with Italian-American lawyer Nancy Dell’Olio, then his affair with presenter Ulrika Jonsson and with FA worker Faria Alam.

In hindsight, of course, it’s clearer than ever that the personal life of the then unmarried man had little to do with his job – but a faux-moral outrage was whipped up by the tabloids regardless. It’s when we hear from the players under his watch – including a candid Wayne Rooney and an affectionate David Beckham, both of them highly complimentary – that we gather the impact of that media storm upon the team as well as the man himself.

Sven, for his part, brushes off that scandal even years later, confidently asserting that sex is a good thing in life and that it’s not anybody’s business what he did with whom. Eriksson is charmingly self-aware of his stubborn streak, but he also carries an integrity that feels rare in today’s world. He admits that his obsession with football led to him not spending enough time with his kids when they were younger, while still acknowledging he knows no other way to prioritise his life – and it’s telling that he and his children have reconnected properly as adults. That sets the tone for a documentary that celebrates the sporting achievements of Eriksson’s work and recalls the “Fake Sheikh” scandal and a terrible financial misjudgement at Notts County – it’s a frank and open account of a life with lots of ups and downs. That range of experiences and emotions, assembled using archive footage with understated slickness, makes for a fascinating watch, and adds up to a world view that Sven quietly shares with the camera. Don’t be sorry, he tells us, but smile and live your life. There’s little doubt that he did just that.

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