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Hometown hero Swedish village proud of local lad turned England coach
Updated: Saturday November 04, 2000 10:49 AM
TORSBY, Sweden (Reuters) -- When Sven-Ake Olsson picked a quiet 17-year-old boy for the first team of Torsby IF soccer club 36 years ago he had little idea that he was selecting a future England coach. Nor that his decision would one day flood this sleepy Swedish town with a swarm of British tabloid journalists. The teenager Olsson whom chose was Sven Goran Eriksson, named on Tuesday as the England national squad's first foreign coach. Eriksson, now 53 and coaching Italian team Lazio, is expected to turn round England's fortunes, which have been in the doldrums since the side reached the Euro 96 semifinals. He is due to take over on July 1, although England's Football Association hopes to persuade Lazio to release him for World Cup qualifiers early in 2001. Olsson's selection of the teenaged Eriksson was controversial. "When I put him in for his first game there were a lot of complaints. But after the game and the next day there were none," Olsson, 71 and now retired, told Reuters as he watched his former team's final training session for the 2000 season. With Olsson as a coach and Eriksson in the midfield, Torsby took first place in the fourth division of the Swedish league and moved up to the third division, the biggest achievement in the team's history. Backbone of the teamThis year Torsby is back in the fourth division again after winning the competition in division five. Midfielder Eriksson never attracted much attention from the stands. "Our idols were the guys who scored, of course, who were good at free kicks. Sven Goran was a good, solid player, the one you could rely on, but not a star -- a backbone of the team, making no mistakes but not really shining," recalled fan Mats Olsson, 47, now an employee of the Torsby tourist office and no relation to the coach. Black-and-white group photos from 1966 and 1967 hanging on the wall of the Torsby IF office show Eriksson, known in Sweden as "Svennis," sitting at the side, looking down, never smiling. "This is me... And this is him," said his old coach, pointing at the picture. "He is a very ordinary guy, well brought up, polite and calm, never any outbursts of emotions. He always thinks first, then speaks. It's in his blood. He does not get excited easily." In the late 1950s Torsby, in a remote and hilly region of central Sweden near the Norwegian border, was a typical Swedish provincial town known mainly for its sawmill. Torsby dwellers went fishing, hunting and cross-country skiing. The nearest big town was the Norwegian capital Oslo, some 200 kilometers away. The soccer craze arrived in Torsby after the 1958 World Cup when Sweden unexpectedly came second, losing the final to a Brazilian team starring a 17-year-old Pele. "As soon as lessons were over we would start playing soccer. From the first year in school on," said Mats Olsson. Technically talentedEriksson was one of many youngsters in the town who became fascinated with the game. His old coach remembers him always hanging around the town's soccer pitch and took him on when he was 17. "He was very technically talented, using both feet. That was his main advantage," said Sven-Ake. Eriksson left his home team in 1969 and moved on. In 1975 he stopped playing because of a foot injury and went into coaching. "We could never imagine he would become England's coach one day. For us it was already a giant step when he became responsible for IFK Goteborg in 1979," Sven-Ake said. Sven-Ake last met Eriksson last summer, just before the beginning of the under-12 regional soccer contest in Torsby named the "Svennis Cup" after Eriksson. His dream is that one day Eriksson will return to Sweden as the national coach but maybe not yet. "I think he can wait until he is 60-65. He would do the job then just as well. "The English will be pleased. This guy takes his job seriously. He is already very tough, you see. He can speak with the big stars to make them understand his way of thinking. He is very good at that."
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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