Sven-Göran Eriksson had ‘extra, extra sex appeal’ because he was England manager and wooed his lovers with chats about poetry, art, mindfulness and yoga, a new documentary revealed today.
The celebrated football coach had a conservative approach on the pitch but a series of steamy affairs with much younger women off it.
The 76-year-old Swede made headlines around the world due to his philandering while managing England’s golden generation between 2001 and 2006.
Speaking on a new Amazon Prime documentary about his life, called ‘Sven’, he talks openly about his affairs but insisted that ‘sex is one of the good things in life for all of us’.
His most famous liaison was with Ulrika Jonsson but she didn’t entirely agree with his sentiment about sex, saying after their affair that sleeping with him was as ‘boring as building an Ikea bookcase’. Legendary manager Martin O’Neill was once asked about Sven’s reputation as a lover and said, laughing: ‘He is very lucky because, with respect – and Sven won’t mind me saying this – he is no Brad Pitt. Anything but.’
But his ex-girlfriend Nancy Dell’Ollio said she loved Sven – and said he ‘power’ and status made him irresistible to women. She left her husband for him.
She said: ‘The first impression that I had about Sven, people in power always have extra, extra sex appeal. I felt in love. It wasn’t something that I was looking for. I was married and I left my husband to start my journey with Sven. We were Sven and Nancy since the first date. I was the first lady of English football and there was never going to be another one after me.’
Football Association secretary Faria Alam had an affair with Sven and FA chief executive Mark Palios. She was forced to resign but gave a series of kiss and tell interviews.
Speaking to the documentary she said: ‘The Noughties were just that, they were naughty.
‘You could do so many things. I’ll be honest, I was a beautiful girl and I attracted a lot of attention.’.
Describing their relationship she said: ‘He didn’t have the mindset of a super-rich man. He talked to me about poetry, he talked to me about art.
‘He was saying how he did yoga and things like that.
‘And I just fell in love with him, I guess. And that lit the fuse for all this to explode’.
‘He said, ‘Tell your story, go and tell them everything. Make some money, why not?’.’
Reports at the time suggested she may have made £300,000 from deals with newspapers.
She said: ‘He said, ‘Tell your story, go and tell them everything. Make some money, why not?’.’
But she was angry at being painted as a ‘gold digger’ when the story broke, adding: ‘I’m the person that’s the bad person, and I was the scapegoat for them to be relieved of any responsibility’.
Terminally-ill Sven has admitted he was ‘stupid’ to have cheated on Nancy with Ulrika and Faria but insists sex should be celebrated and ‘I didn’t do anything criminal’.
His reputation was hurt by his affairs and he has revealed that at the height of his fame he met Tony Blair for tea at 10 Downing Street and the Labour PM joked: ‘Shall we take a bet? Who keeps the job longest, you or me? We have two impossible jobs’.
And poignantly speaking about his terminal pancreatic cancer he said: ‘Whoever it was said ‘life is too short’ is right. I had a good life, maybe too good. You have to pay for it. I think we all are scared of the day when it’s finished, when you die. You have to learn to accept it for what it is’.
Nancy said she almost left him over his affair with Ulrika – but her lawyer advised her not to and she also liked being the ‘first lady of English football’ so stayed with him.
He was in a relationship with Italian lawyer Nancy for almost a decade but then had affairs with Swedish model and journalist Ulrika Jonsson and former Football Association secretary Faria Alam.
Sven concedes that his reputation was hurt by his affairs, but he didn’t feel he did anything terrible.
Talking about when his fling with Ulrika emerged, he said: ‘Sex is one of the good things in life for all of us. She was not married. I was not married.
‘Probably I was stupid but I think I didn’t do anything criminal. I didn’t really disturb anyone.’
Nancy wanted to leave him – but changed her mind.
Sven said: ‘She loved it. The tension. She was a lady from the upper classes in Rome. She liked to go out with important people.
‘In the beginning I didn’t react very much. But you don’t change people at a certain age. It was not peace in my house always.’
While Nancy said: ‘The stupidity of Sven. After Sven’s first scandal, I wanted to leave him.
‘I couldn’t want to admit to myself that there was a possibility that I made a mistake. That I left everything for him. My lawyers said give him another chance but think what you can get from this.’
The documentary, released next week on Prime, comes after Sven revealed in January that he was terminally ill with cancer and was told he had a year to live.
‘Hopefully, at the end people will say, ‘Yeah, he was a good man’. But everyone will not say that. I hope you will remember me as a positive guy and trying to do everything he could do. Don’t be sorry. Smile’, he said.
He lives in Sweden near Sunne, in Värmland, where he grew up.
His partner Yaniseth Alcides, a former dancer he met in Mexico, is caring for him.
She said: ‘I have hope that we will be together for many more years. I will not lose that hope.’
Sven adds: ‘It’s a beautiful place. It makes me calm, below the mountain where my father grew up.
‘The ashes could be thrown into the water here.’
In a glittering managerial career Sven was boss of IFK Gothenburg, Benfica, Roma, Roma, Fiorentina, Sampdoria, Lazio, Manchester City and Leicester City.
He was also manager of Mexico, Ivory Coast and the Philippines.
But while in charge of England for five years he became the most famous football manager in the world.
Between 2001 and 2006 he guided the so-called ‘golden generation’ of stars including David Beckham, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard but never won the major trophy that was expected.
His tragic diagnosis came almost exactly 22 years after he resigned as Lazio manager earlier than expected to assume his coaching role with England.
The Swede had signed a five-year contract three months earlier to take over in the summer of 2001.
Eriksson said his Lazio side ‘were one of the best in the world’ and he was probably correct.
But that ‘once in a lifetime’ chance to manage England, and the £3million salary that came with it, proved too good to turn down.
Eriksson soon revitalised a long-failing England side. The team’s thumping 5-1 win over Germany offering great optimism and flipping the qualifying group for World Cup 2002, even if it took Beckham’s last-minute free-kick against Greece to avoid a tricky play-off with Ukraine.
Eriksson demanded his private life should remain private but the job was too much in the white hot glare of the spotlight for that to wash.
On the pitch, England laboured through their World Cup group but gathered momentum by battering Denmark.
In the quarter-final with Brazil, England led through Owen but David Seaman’s hapless misjudgement of Ronaldinho’s flighted free-kick five minutes after half-time saw them trailing.
‘We wanted Winston Churchill and we got Iain Duncan Smith,’ Southgate famously said of Eriksson’s limp half-time team talk but it was his dithering over subs and tactics when Ronaldinho was sent off with 33 minutes left that ultimately cost England.
England will likely never have a better chance to win a World Cup. If they’d overcome 10-man Brazil, they would have faced Turkey in the semi-finals and a Germany team they’d recently thrashed 5-1 in the final.
Eriksson continued but a year later was spotted with Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon, leading to paper speculation he was about to reap the rewards of Roman Abramovich’s arrival.
In the end, the FA were the ones that panicked, tabling an extended contract until 2008 at £5m-a-year.
And when an England side that were booed off at Upton Park after losing a friendly to and could only draw 2-2 at home to Macedonia before scraping qualification for Euro 2004, the omens weren’t good.
So it proved. Recovering from opening night defeat to France, a team powered up by 18-year-old Rooney swept aside Switzerland and Croatia to set up a quarter-final with hosts Portugal.
Again England squandered an early lead given them by Owen before Sol Campbell saw a goal disallowed in extra time and the inevitable exit on penalties.
The talents of the so-called ‘Golden Generation’ were patently going to waste but sacking Sven was too expensive for the FA to contemplate.
He laboured on but when details of his affair with FA secretary Faria Alam emerged two months after the tournament, another chunk of credibility was chipped away.
There was an easy tabloid contrast to be drawn between his impassive observations from the bench and apparent energy behind drawn curtains.
By the time the 2006 World Cup rolled around, Eriksson had been duped by the News of the World’s ‘Fake Sheikh’ Mazher Mahmood, betraying confidences about players and clubs.
FA chief executive Brian Barwick cut short Eriksson’s contract, with a reduced pay-off, and told him to deliver success in the tournament in Germany. But they failed at the quarter-final stage again.