When, four years ago, Sven-Goran Eriksson stood on the threshold of his last World Cup as England's manager he lurched out of character and made this daring public statement: “I think we will win it this time.” It was the closest the Swede had ever come to Henry V.
Eager England bought in to his message of destiny, scorning him when he failed to live up to expectations. In fairness to Eriksson, the post-mortems overlooked the fact that he had added a more prophetic caveat to that earlier, unusually bold announcement, one that stressed the need for luck with injuries and refereeing decisions for England to thrive.
Michael Owen's ruptured knee ligaments and Wayne Rooney's tarnished temperament were key to the disintegration of Eriksson's plans, a penalty shoot-out merely applying the necessary coup de grace at the quarter-final stage. But ask him now if England judged him fairly and the Swede eschews excuses.
“In Germany in 2006 we should have reached the semi-final at least, because we had a team good enough to do that,” he says. “At two World Cups and one Euro I have had three quarterfinals. I will let people judge me if that was good or not.”
Favourable judgment
No one can have judged Eriksson more favourably than Kaba Kon, the Ivory Coast team's general manager and the man who has recently returned Eriksson to international management. Little more than two months before his nation were to be thrust into Group G, the World Cup's toughest, Kon audaciously dispensed with Vahid Halilhodzic.
The quarter-final exit at the Africa Cup of Nations had been a national embarrassment, Kon said, considering that “football has overtaken coffee and cocoa” as the Ivory Coast's primary export. Halilhodzic had to pay and Kon turned to the Swede.
“We had to have a change of manager from the dressing room's point of view,” Kon explained.
Halilhodzic's players had found unity only in their revolt against the Bosnia-born Frenchman's management. To Eriksson lay the task of picking up the pieces and forging dressing-room harmony.
As if it were not enough that no African team has ever progressed beyond the World Cup quarter-finals, it is Brazil and Portugal — the world's first and third-ranked teams — who now loom like the mountains surrounding the Elephants' Alpine retreat.
Indefinable enigma
Eriksson cannot even be sure of victory against the other team that awaits him, the indefinable enigma that is North Korea. The dislocated elbow suffered by Didier Drogba on Friday will not help his cause.
“I like challenges, yes,” Eriksson says with a smile when the Guardian meets him at his Ivory Coast squad's Swiss training camp by the softly lapping shores of Lake Geneva. “But now the World Cup is in Africa and you'd guess, without being an expert, that maybe one or two or three African teams will do very well at this World Cup.
“And if one team goes further they will have the whole continent behind them, all of Africa, I am quite sure about that.”
In Geneva Eriksson would be forced to excuse 17 of his 30 pre-selected players from the first week's training due to their extended club commitments.
Such players as Drogba, Yaya Tour and Salomon Kalou numbered among the absentees, meaning his first opportunity to meet the full squad came less than four weeks before their tournament opener on June 20.
In that short time he has had to cut 30 players to 23. He has had to create solidity in a defence that at the Africa Cup of Nations had conceded four goals in its games against Ghana and Algeria, neither of them remotely the equal of his first two World Cup opponents.
And all this when French, Cote d'Ivoire's official tongue, is far from the most fluent language of his polyglot repertoire.
Short-term planning
Analysing his task, Eriksson appreciates that unless his impact is instant all will be lost. “I don't talk about long-term planning; it's a short term thing,” he says. “It's very, very simple. If we are to have a chance of getting through this group we have to work as a team.
“On the pitch, in the dressing room, in the restaurant, in the bus. Whatever we do. If we can't manage to achieve that we will not go through. It's as easy as that. That's up to them and it's up to me and my staff to do that. Because if we don't do that it will be impossible.”
Halilhodzic's parting shot revealing a squad so splintered that “some of the players do not want to play together” would surely be enough to inspire dry-mouthed terror in other coaches. But not the ever-sanguine Eriksson, who instead draws confidence in the justifiable conclusion that if things click, he has the materials at his disposal to construct a stunning World Cup campaign.
“When I got the question if I wanted this job I thought, Drogba, Kalou, Emmanuel Ebou, Didier Zokora ... all these players, so why not? It's a lot of good football players. Some of them are top, top class in world football.
“You have to defend well, attack well and give support. That is what I have had as a target: to work this out and to defend well. If you don't defend well against Portugal and Brazil then it is goodnight.”
Drill instructor
Indeed, in that context, Eriksson has been able to make a virtue of the fact that only 13 players had been made available for the first week's training sessions, since seven were defenders. Eriksson the drill instructor, walked about the pitch with his players to outline defensive positions.
This is a side to him the England players seldom saw since it was Steve McClaren who took the coaching sessions on his behalf. “Steve was very good with the coaching side but I love it; I like that side of it,” he says. “I have always, all my life been on the pitch doing the coaching. I did it with Mexico.”
After his surprise dismissal from Manchester City in 2008, Eriksson moved to Central America. It was not a happy time. Being holed up for his own safety in a 30th-floor penthouse in the Polanco district of Mexico City while a drug war raged outside did not suit the gregarious Eriksson's temperament.
Professionally there were difficulties, too. If he had ever found the club-versus-country conflict in England troublesome, it was of an altogether different order with Mexico.
“The Mexican football federation board is always the Division One football clubs,” he says. “It makes it a little difficult. Before I started I had half of them against me.”
Defeat to Honduras, Mexico's second loss in the first three qualifying matches, cost Eriksson his job, with Javier Aguirre ultimately guiding Mexico through.
“Maybe it's good I'm going to the World Cup with a very good team, so I'm happy. Maybe they are better than Mexico.”
Opening encounter
For that estimation ever to be tested both sides must reach next month's semi-finals at least, an unlikely outcome. More pressingly the Ivory Coast must first prove they are better than Portugal in their opening game of the tournament.
It is a match Eriksson describes as being “like a final”, and pitches him against an opponent that until last month he had seen more of at close quarters than the team he currently manages.
It was Portugal who ended Eriksson's England campaign at the 2006 World Cup with that quarterfinal shootout, a fate they had also dealt his side in the last eight at Euro 2004.
“Portugal is always difficult for us,” Eriksson says. “Portugal always have a good team: technically, tactically they are very good. The manager, Carlos Queiroz, knows his football. Of course they're very good. But I hope it will be difficult for Portugal.”
Football's Portuguese prophet, Jose Mourinho, foretells that it will, saying they will not win the World Cup even if Cristiano Ronaldo plays at “1,000 kilometres an hour”.
What does Eriksson think of that? “Even if I believed that I'd never say it,” he says with a disapproving pout. “Especially if I was Portuguese, and Jose Mourinho is Portuguese. Why ever say it? No one believed Greece would win the Euro in 2004, so why shouldn't Portugal win this World Cup?”
Even if they do, though, Eriksson seems to suspect they will have emerged from Group G as the second-placed team behind Brazil.
Solid approach
In qualifying the five-times world champions curbed swashbuckling enthusiasm in favour of a more solid approach. It worked, to an extent. Brazil conceded a mere 11 goals, keeping 10 clean sheets in their 18 matches, but they scored only 33 and ended up topping the South American qualifying group by a single point.
Eriksson, however, believes Brazilian momentum will pick up once their tournament gets under way against North Korea on 15 June.
“Ask 90 per cent of people around the world who are the two big favourites for this World Cup and they will say Brazil and Spain,” he says. “It's always nice to see Brazil playing football. I know the manager [Dunga] very well. I brought him to Fiorentina in my last year there.
“Already as a player he knew everything tactically: defending, attacking, everything. He was one of the best players I ever worked with. So I'm not surprised Brazil are so well prepared. It is very difficult to score against them. They have a good manager and he is a good coach as well.”
Eriksson even guards against overstating his team's chances in the North Korea match. He notes that due to that nation's unique politics most of the squad have been afforded a six-month hiatus from league football to attend a training camp in preparation for the tournament.
Maintaining possession
But against Korea, as in all the Ivorians' group matches, he says, it is essential to maintain possession. “If we can keep the ball it will go well, otherwise we will have problems. You can't win games without the ball,” he says.
And so we return seamlessly to England. But despite a series of unconvincing displays in the warm-up matches, Eriksson rates Fabio Capello's side as serious contenders. Indeed, if he thought England would win it last time ... “I think they have a bigger chance this season than they have had in the past,” the Swede says.
“They are more mature, they have a lot of experience. Take a player like Rooney, he is better today than he was four years ago, of course. He is stronger and knows the game better.
“Many of those players have played in the World Cup before, some of them two. They have experience, they are extremely good football players.”
Again Eriksson adds the caveat about players' fitness being central to success, but he feels the added maturity of the past four years really could be decisive.
“You have pressure on you with England because the England fans want to win something and they haven't won anything since 1966,” he says.
“Managing to reach the semi-final or final, for teams like Germany who have been a lot of times, it is not so hard. For England it is not like that. They have expectations and dreams. Always.”
© Guardian News and Media 2010
