As Eriksson is diagnosed with terminal cancer, HOLT pays tribute

Harbingers of woe and doom came often for Sven Goran Eriksson in the years at the start of this century when he managed the England men’s team.

They came to him with prophecies of his demise because of a romantic liaison, a quarter-final defeat or a feeling he was not worthy of managing England’s vainglorious Golden Generation.

He always stayed level, calm and kind. I never saw him angry. Always, he bade those impostors and inquisitors good day with uncommon grace and, always, they left as the losers, victims of his unflappable urbanity.

Even at the end of his time in charge after the 2006 World Cup, he pleaded with the media not to ‘kill’ Wayne Rooney, who had been sent off in the last eight loss to Portugal.

And so it was on Thursday when Eriksson, 75, revealed he had terminal cancer and, perhaps, less than a year to live. He did not waste any time on anger, resentment or regret. He bade cancer good day and said he would get on with his life.

‘I’m going to resist as long as I can,’ he said. ‘When you get a message like that, you appreciate every day and are happy when you wake up in the morning and you feel OK, so that’s what I’m doing.’ If anyone can keep cancer at bay for a while with kindness and equanimity, it will be Sven.

His kindness, grace and class will be his epitaph as much as all he achieved in football, but his place in this country’s sporting history rests largely on the fact that when the FA appointed him as successor to Kevin Keegan at the start of 2001, he became the first foreign manager to take charge of the England team.

In just shy of six years in charge, Eriksson became an unlikely standard-bearer for football’s emerging celebrity culture. He was there at the birth of the cult of the WAGs in