if David feels he initiated it, that is disingenuous, because he wasn’t at the first meeting. With the benefit of hindsight, Adam might say: “I always had this solution in mind, I led them there,” but I don’t think that’s true because we started with a blank sheet of paper, worked through all the possibilities, and everybody had their particular suggestions written down.
‘I don’t remember who first mentioned Eriksson – it might have been Adam, to be fair. I said Bobby Robson. I was saying that whatever we did, we should have the next man in place, so we wouldn’t have to go through the whole process again from scratch. The young bucks, maybe two or three coaches, should work alongside the main man, so that a ready-made successor could come from Peter Taylor, Steve McClaren or Bryan Robson, whose names all came up.’
Had Dein blocked any move in Wenger’s direction? Ridsdale was adamant that he did not. ‘People said because I was on the sub-committee, David [O’Leary] couldn’t be picked, which was a joke. He was on the list, but what had he done? He was never seriously considered for that reason. The same people said Wenger couldn’t get the job because of David [Dein], but it was at that first meeting that Sven emerged as our preferred foreign candidate, and David wasn’t even there. Wenger was considered, as was Alex Ferguson, but Sven was the number one non-English choice.’
Dein, away on Arsenal business, could have been contacted by mobile phone, but was not consulted either before or during that first meeting. Had he had any input? ‘No,’ Ridsdale said, emphatically. ‘Well, I know he didn’t speak to me, or to Dave Richards, Noel White or Howard Wilkinson. To Crozier … who knows? But Crozier never said: “I’ve spoken to Dein and we wouldn’t get Arsene Wenger.”’
For the second meeting, it was Ridsdale’s turn to be absent, on club business. Everybody else was present, Dein included. Ridsdale says: ‘All I know about what happened was from a briefing I had straight afterwards by phone, and that was to say that the second meeting had confirmed the conclusions of the first, and that thereafter Adam had the authority to go and try to get Sven.’
Having agreed on the man they wanted, the Football Association’s problem was that Eriksson was under contract to Lazio, the Italian champions, who were still in the Champions’ League and intent on winning the European Cup. Naturally they wanted to keep the coach who had brought them the coveted scudetto. Adam Crozier, however, was not about to be deterred, and within two days of his first approach to the Roman club he had his man. He recalled: ‘My attitude was: “If you’re going to go for someone, do it properly. Make your move quickly, equipped with everything you need to get the business done. Get it done there and then, on the spot.” So I prepared everything I’d need to have with me when I got to speak to Sven about the job. I had analysis of matches, profiles of the players – not just the senior squad but the Under-21s and those coming through the youth scheme, right down to the Under-15s. I had videos of all the key games, statistics, everything. That enabled me to say to him: “Look, this is where we are, this is where we’re going, this is what we want to try to do.”
‘The other key thing when I made the move was to be able to offer our man a long-term contract. I’d got the people here [the FA] to agree to five years. If our objective was to win a major tournament by 2006, the contract should last until then. We needed stability, and five years provided the opportunity to train up people with the potential to take over.’
Crozier and David Dein, who has emerged in recent years as the most dynamic member of the FA board, flew to Rome by private jet on Sunday 29 October 2000, and prepared overnight for their meeting with Lazio and their coach the following day. Crozier said: ‘We met Sergio Cragnotti [the Lazio president], his son, Massimo, Dino Zoff [Lazio vice-president and former coach] and one or two others at the club’s training ground, at Formello. Sven was present for some of the time. Cragnotti senior was an absolute gentleman. Top class. We explained why we wanted to speak to Sven, and Mr Cragnotti said he was caught in two minds. Lazio had just enjoyed their most successful season ever, and were on a high, but he and Sven had become very close. A bond had been built up between them over a momentous season, and he didn’t want to stand between his friend and what he wanted. From our point of view, that was a great attitude – one not many would have taken.
‘At this stage Mr Cragnotti asked Sven to join us, and said: “Do you want to talk to them?” Sven said: “Yes, I would very much like to. This is the sort of job I’ve dreamed about, it’s something I’ve always wanted to try.” The second stage was for us to talk to him, and we did that there and then. Everything was agreed between us within 24 hours.’ Money was never a problem, Crozier insisted, and nor should it have been, with £2.5m a year, plus bonuses, on the table. In comparison, just four years earlier Terry Venables was on £125,000 a year when he took England to the semi-finals at Euro 96, and Kevin Keegan had been getting £800,000 annually. At Lazio, Eriksson earned £1.75m a year, tax free. ‘The third stage,’ Crozier said, ‘was agreeing with Mr Cragnotti the timing of the changeover. Initially, Lazio were unhappy about Sven leaving them before the end of the season because they were still in the Champions’ League, but eventually we managed to persuade them to meet us halfway. Sven would join us part-time from February, in time for our game against Spain at Villa Park. Sven wanted to finish on a high with Lazio, to repay Mr Cragnotti. He didn’t want to leave them in the lurch. There was that closeness between the two of them.’
Reluctantly, Crozier and Dein accepted that there was going to be an interregnum. Fortunately, they thought, they had just the right man to plug the gap. ‘We had a friendly coming up against Italy,’ Crozier explained, ‘and our initial objective was to get Bobby Robson as caretaker for that one game, with Steve McClaren and Peter Taylor backing him up. We were a bit surprised when Newcastle said no to that, and poor old Bobby was devastated. He really wanted to do it, and I don’t really see why he couldn’t have done so. After all, it was never the intention to have Bobby for more than that one game. What we said to Newcastle was: “Look, we don’t want your manager full-time because it’s not the future for us, but depending on who we go for [we didn’t want to give away who we were after], could we have him part-time?” Once we couldn’t get him, we made the decision to promote Peter and Steve. The reason for that was that Bobby was unique. He’d done the job before, and everybody would know that he wasn’t going to be our future because of his age. There was no point drafting somebody else in for one game, better to go with youth.’
Eriksson’s decision had been quickly made. He said: ‘My intention had been to stay another year with Lazio, but when the offer from the FA came, I immediately felt: “This is exactly what I want to do.” Such an offer comes only once in a lifetime. I never analysed the risks involved. I never thought: “I might not succeed.” On the contrary, I thought: “If I don’t accept, I won’t be able to sleep at night, wondering what I could have done with the job.” My intuition told me what to do, as it has done every time a new offer has come up. Of course it was a big change to take on England, but it was a bigger step, and an even greater risk, to move from the little village of Torsby and the coaching job with Degerfors to a club the size of Gothenburg. The step from Rome to London didn’t feel as big.’
He had not given much thought to being a foreigner. ‘Sweden had an English coach [George Raynor] in 1958, when they went to the World Cup finals. Why, then, shouldn’t a Swede take England? I read the book The Second Most Important Job In The Country, which is all about the England managers from 1949 through to Kevin Keegan. It showed that all of them were declared idiots at some time, even Sir Alf Ramsey, so I knew what to expect.’
It was as well that he was prepared. The FA’s decision to appoint their first non-English manager in 128 years of international football immediately polarized public opinion. John Barnwell of the League Managers’ Association and Gordon Taylor of the PFA objected strongly, on the grounds that the job should always go to an Englishman. Barnwell described it an ‘an insult’ to his members, and Taylor accused the Football Association of ‘betraying their heritage’. Their comments were widely reported, and, as tends to be the way of