Sven Goran Eriksson's Private Life Suddenly Isn't Quite so Private

Sven Goran Eriksson was on Sky Sports News this week promoting his new book. While the presenter gamely asked a few questions about the contents of said book, Sven spent half the time answering the questions and the other half gazing distractedly above the cameras and at a blank wall.

It was classic Sven, selling his own book in the same vaguely detached and serene air with which he has done most things in his career. The same sense that he'd rather be somewhere else, most likely having dinner somewhere nice and with one of the numerous great romances detailed in the book, than either in a studio or on the touchline of a football pitch.

Eriksson was a rather baffling character in his managerial prime. He undoubtedly achieved success, notably with Benfica, Lazio and certainly in the first three years of his England tenure. The thing was, there was no real obvious reason why. He did not appear to be a particularly inspiring manager—something that Gareth Southgate's famous quip about needing a speech from Winston Churchill but getting Iain Duncan Smith—appears to confirm.

He rarely tried anything especially innovative tactically, unless you count playing Emile Heskey on the left-wing. His main attribute seemed to be that the players liked him, and the players liked him because he basically let them do what they wanted.

And yet, he was successful for a while, despite the constant criticism from the press, which largely stemmed from his complex private life, which takes up a decent chunk of the book's index.

At the time, Eriksson was clear about such talk. When a journalist, who probably thought he was being terribly amusing, used a question in an England press conference to ask if he would be taking Ulrika Jonsson or Nancy Dell'Olio to the World Cup, he said (as reported by the Daily Mail), "My private life, I prefer to have that private."

And he was right. The stories were titillating but had nothing to do with his job as a football manager. The problem is that Eriksson has gone back on this now that he has a book to sell and, apparently, debts to clear after misguidedly trusting a financial advisor.

He told the Evening Standard this week:

"

That’s okay. It has been said so many things about me. I try to write in the book how I lived it.

If I am going to write a book, which I have done, I think we have to get it right—whatever has been written about me, about football, about my private life.

There has been said a lot of it, but many things are not correct.

"

So there we have it. The book is being written so we get the "right" story about his life and career. He's just concerned about accuracy. He just wants us to be well-informed.

One of Eriksson's other key attributes as a manager was his adaptability. He could quite easily adjust his style according to the surroundings and whatever situation he found himself in. That was one of the reasons he did well and continued to get work in so many different countries. As he was changeable then as a manager, he is now changeable when it comes to his principals.

The same adaptability that made him, for a while at least, a successful football manager, now makes him entirely impossible to take seriously.