What can we learn from Sven-Göran Eriksson?

0:28Watch it early on the High Performance app. Friday conversations. It's only a few minutes long, but we thought it was right for us to pay tribute to and talk about the life that was lived by the former England manager, Sven Euron Eriksson, who sadly passed away from pancreatic cancer just a few days ago. And we thought, you know, just to reflect really on the life that he's lived and the legacy that he's left behind. Yeah, it's terribly sad news. He'll be missed not just as a football manager, but also as a man, as we can hear from the tributes that have been paid to him this week, from the likes of David Beckham and Wayne Rooney and Roberto Mancini, people that worked with him and obviously felt deeply about him.

1:10And that's a testament to the impact they had on their lives. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, at the moment, people can see the documentary Sven, which is currently available on Amazon Prime. it was only released just a few days before it was announced that Sven had passed away. And, you know, I'm very proud actually to say that the final message from Sven, which was very much in his own words and the message that he wanted to leave people with, was produced by Whisper, Whisper Group, which is the production company that I co-founded a few years ago. And it's interesting actually how it came about, Damien.

1:45So, you know, we believe very strongly in collaborating and partnering with people at Whisper. And we were approached by someone who had a great contact and a great connection with Sven. And he said, look, you guys have just produced a Ben Stokes documentary for Amazon. It was really well received. It was really well produced. Would you be interested in partnering with me to tell Sven's story? And I think what's really interesting is we then put together an amazing team of documentary makers who went and met with Sven. And if you rewind the clock to the moment they met him and they spoke to him about telling his story, his story at that point Damien was that he wanted people to see the the positive side of his life you know so much and we can talk about this so much of his life I think was defined in the public eye by the moments where Sven was flawed or got things wrong or failed but actually he was very keen to speak to us on camera about the great stuff in his life he wanted to celebrate the career that he'd had and I've been speaking to a lot of the production team you know since the documentary came out and they tell me Damien that he was actually he saw a future for himself in football you know he felt he should still be in the game he felt that he should still get another shot at being a manager you know this wasn't um a documentary that was about a man whose life was over or coming to an end this was about a man who still had so much that he felt he could offer and obviously you know we we were filming with him months before his his cancer diagnosis and then obviously the the documentary took a big a big change in in terms of its direction you know Yeah, I mean, that's really interesting when you think of it, of people of that age with that wealth of experience and the depth of knowledge, how we often just discard them and assume that what they have is not relevant because, you know, for whatever our stereotypes about age or knowledge.

3:29But imagine if somebody like Sven would have been able to act as a mentor to think of a young manager like Mikel Arteta, you know, and be able to sit on their shoulder and be able to see the pitfalls and the potholes that are coming their way and just give them their knowledge of experience of how do you avoid and navigate your way around them. No, I think you're totally right. Because I think that, you know, sometimes, again, we look at someone who might have a few flawed elements to their life or a few moments where they failed and go, well, what can they offer? But I often think that it's those moments where things didn't go right, that provide the biggest learnings.

4:06And Sven could come in and work with a younger manager like Mikel at Arsenal and give them so much knowledge, so much information of the times that things didn't go right, and what he learned from that. um and I know that you know from your from your own personal experience and the life that you've lived that you think that Sven was actually instrumental in changing the way that British sport thought about psychology worked with psychologists and and really prioritized the emotional intelligence of of managers and sports people right well yeah I mean I was really lucky that um I got to meet a guy that had worked with Sven a guy called Dr Willie Raylio who was a Norwegian psychologist.

4:46And Sven had been working with him since the 1970s when he first started in Sweden and then he went over to Portugal. And if any of our listeners are familiar with the phrase that we regularly use on the podcast about cultural architects, that's a direct quote from Dr. Willy Raylio, who spoke about whenever you get a group of people together, there's always a hierarchy and if you get the alphas or the leaders within that group to demonstrate and role model the behaviors and the standards that you want everybody else to do they become really powerful figures and that's where the phrase cultural architects comes from and I think Sven was a pioneer in many ways of tapping into people from outside the traditional domains of football and utilizing their wisdom and knowledge and experience to be able to enhance performance and in a moment we're going to hear from Henry Winter who's going to join us on this episode to talk about his reflections of Sven Henry Winter is an incredible sports journalist who spent many many years working with Sven I think this is a good little story to explain the sort of lasting effects of Sven-Jürgen Eriksson I think that he is someone who prioritised the human being didn't prioritise the human being over the result but I think he understood that prioritising the human being often got you the best result and we would love to get David Beckham on high performance We've sent many emails and text messages.

6:11Funnily enough, it's been a no so far because David does very little of this sort of stuff. He's a hard guy to get hold of. He's very busy. The moment that Whisper reached out to David Beckham to come and talk about Sven, not only was it an instant yes, but a bunch of dates got sent over when David would love to sit down and talk about the impact that Sven had had on him. And I think that that actually is the true legacy of Svenja and Ericsson. And if we think of things that we can learn as high performers from him, it's the fact that he was there for the people who, like him, were under scrutiny, were under pressure, were in the public eye.

6:44Look at the way that Sven left England, where his final message wasn't about him. It was about Wayne Rooney, where he said, look after this kid. Don't destroy this guy. And I think it comes back to that old phrase that people will forget what you say or what you did, but they won't forget how you made them feel. And it's clear that Sven left the likes of Wayne Rooney and David Beckham feeling a certain way. and that's why they were so keen to be part of the documentary. Well, another person that played under him was Gareth Southgate and when we sat down with Gareth, we asked him about the impact that Sven had had and I think it's often like politicians, you know, the qualities that we really admire in them.

7:19For example, they might be calm and quite logical and remove emotion from a situation when they first come into the role is eventually the things that people get bored of when you consistently do it and then we then start to criticise them for it. And this was the conversation we'd had with Gareth, that when Sven first came in, he was seen as almost an antidote to Kevin Keegan's tub-dumping, highly emotional style of leadership. We sort of revered him. Let's listen to what Gareth said about Sven. Sven was being authentic, right? You know, he was a calm demeanour. What he brought to the England team, where Kevin had been a different type of leader, more emotional.

8:05Sven was very calm. And I think that helped people like Steven Gerrard, David Beckham, certainly in the initial stages with England, that a lot of the noise, the hullabaloo around England was calmer. We're just focusing on performance. It's not all about banging the drum and we're going to win and we're going to do this. so he created that environment that was gareth southgate there talking about his time playing under sven what do you think um we could take away from from that clip about how we could remain authentically ourselves damien under under incredible scrutiny or pressure or times when it's so much easier to not be our authentic self and be the person that other people want us to be Well, it's a really interesting question, Jake.

8:54And I think this comes back to knowing who you are. This is about that self-awareness of knowing this is a person I am when I'm at my very best and being really clear about what those behaviors are. the second thing then is that beyond self-awareness of opening yourself up for feedback but from the right people the people who know you know what your strengths are and know what you're trying to achieve and that allows you then to be able to tune out the noise that I can imagine surrounds so many sort of high profile coaches not least the England national coach so it avoids you having to sort of bend to the whims of what the public want and just allow you to focus on doing what you can do when you're at your very best.

9:41The other thing that I think we should really talk about is the fact that Sven wasn't a perfect person and sometimes I think we're guilty I'm going to definitely speak to Henry about this because I think sometimes we're guilty of thinking that you can only be a high performer if you're not flawed right the truth is that that person doesn't exist right all of us are flawed and I feel that once you accept your flaws it makes it hard for people to use those flaws against you and actually accepting and being proud of the fact that you are flawed and you do make mistakes is a reminder for all of us when we see people who are put on a pedestal that we're all actually in that place you know all of us are making mistakes and sometimes coming up short and I think what I learned from the messages that Sven shared in that documentary and you know there was tough times you know he was estranged from his daughter for a long time his philandering um would have left a lot of people unhappy for a long period of time I think what I learned was the fact that Sven isn't saying it's okay to to do things that aren't right but it is okay to fail at times and just accept that that's what human beings do and he kind of did own those failures Damien you know he never never apologized for the things that that he did or the things that he got wrong he kind of put the message out there that well I'm a human being so this is this is kind of how I am and I think that's really the lesson like don't be so hard on yourself and Sven it feels like he wasn't really hard on himself I think we have to acknowledge that we're talking about not football managers we're talking about people that just happen to be football managers and there's not yet been any of us that would claim to be perfect or without our flaws so I think you're right in that regard and we have to just accept that that comes as part of the package but I also think there's another wider point here about the cost it takes of pursuing high performance you know we've had this conversation many times jake and i think in this case sven being willing to leave his home of sweden and travel around the world and then submit himself to the demands and the and the sort of the pressures that come with those high profile jobs has meant that part of the sacrifice has had to be time with his family or his children and his loved ones and that is part of the cost and it's again worth us highlighting that high performance is always going to be subjective it's for all of us individually to decide what the cost is going to be and are we willing to pay it and unfortunately in Sven's case it led to him being estranged from his daughter yeah I think embracing your flaws is certainly a lesson that Sven has left us with and I think he's able to do that because he had an incredible amount of resilience And actually, if anyone has not yet watched the documentary on Amazon Prime, it's worth just watching the bit, Damien, where he kind of gets announced as the England manager.

12:32And the questions from the press were horrendous. You know, they were, this is a guy. Go on, tell us what sort of questions. One of the players sort of picked a random English football club and asked Fenn who the left back was. Another journalist decided to say that you've had 24 years in management and you've only coached one player. And this is something that I really have. I take issue with this sort of thing. This is a guy coming over from a foreign country, taking a big chance, living a dream, becoming the manager of England. And it felt like some of the media in that room's only job was to try their best to catch him out.

13:05For the benefit of who? To make themselves look big, to make him look small. Who does that help? It doesn't help the FA, doesn't help the England team, doesn't help the England fans. It's just childish, petty playground stuff. but actually that resilience that Sven would have built in his time as a manager the resilience he definitely would have built in his in his time as an England manager I think really helped him towards the end as well and I do think it's worth saying that you know when we at Whisper started filming with Sven it was about an uplifting positive all-encompassing embracing documentary about his I mean remarkable life it was a pretty mad story the stuff that he did and the stuff that he saw and experienced and obviously then there's the opportunity to not do this documentary for him but he wanted to carry on with it he wanted to share his message at the end and I think that that idea of surviving in the face of adversity and pushing through it is also something that we we can take away from the documentary in the way that Sven lived his life that that just keeping going in difficult times is really important yeah I think that's a really powerful lesson that Sven is sharing with us but again I think I'd go back to this theme of high performance is always going to be subjective it's up for us all to determine and identify what the best we can do can be in any situation and I think what I like about Sven's message there is that the impact he's had on many people's lives the difference he's made to a number of people both in his personal life and his professional life is really quite profound and I think at the end of the day that's what people remember not what we did but how we behaved and how we made people feel and I'm glad that he wants people to think of him fondly and to smile when his name is ever mentioned.

15:00Well let's find out what some of those lessons are then it's an absolute pleasure to welcome to High Performance the journalist Henry Winter whose relationship with Sven goes back a very long way. Henry, thank you very much for taking the time to chat to us. So, Sven-Jur and Eriksson, what do you think is the biggest thing that we can learn from him, the things he did, the way he lived his life, as we all try and find our own version of high performance? Grace under pressure. I mean, I went to so many press conferences with him when results maybe had been bad, when England had gone out of a tournament, when Ulrika had dropped another book.

15:35Just grace under pressure. And also, Jake, as you've seen in the last 18 months, you know, it's not simply about the way you live your life. It's the way you exit it, if I can put it as brutally as that. And he has handled this with, again, with such dignity. He said goodbye and he said goodbye to his football family. So he went to Liverpool and got that amazing reaction there. And then he went over to sort of Benfica. I remember trying to contact him halfway between the two. And I just thought, you know, this is kind of like a farewell tour, very dignified, saying goodbye to people. I mean, who gets a chance to do that in life as you as you just sort of walk away from this great world?

16:16And he's managed to do that. So he said goodbye to his football family. And then he said goodbye to the most important people, Lina and Johan, his children and grandchildren. And he left this world surrounded by people who loved him. So, yeah, I think there are a lot of lessons that we could all learn from the way Sven lived his life and the way Sven departed it. And Henry, if I can follow up on that, one of those questions that you said you directed in the conference were around whether he should take a sports psychologist to the World Cups. What was his answer to that? I mean, it was very much raised by him and something that he kept returning to post 2006 when he'd left the England job.

16:55And the relationship with sort of media like me was slightly less adversarial. And, you know, it was less sort of grilling him about should he be taking players with metatarsals to major tournaments? And more he could reflect, you know, more openly about the sort of the issues. And I mean, I got on with him as other journalists did. And maybe he trusted me and he talked, you know, we should have taken a sports psychologist. We should have worked a little bit more on penalties because he kind of shrugged off the penalties. Oh, yeah, we have been practicing them, but they hadn't been practicing them enough.

17:25so things like that I mean you're all about high performance high performance as we've seen under Gareth Southgate is about absolute marginal gains is about leaving nothing to chance he was so good his people skills and I would include that under high performance I know that you know the people that you've interviewed they've probably all got in common they've got very good man management human skills again that's tied in with the admiration for Sven his grace under pressure but but just simple things like you know Wayne Rooney that last press conference that Sven had that excruciating exit press conference that a leaving England manager has to give normally in defeat he just said to us he said do not kill Wayne Rooney you need him you know my time is finished here but you need him your country needs him he was almost jabbing a finger at us like one of those recruiting posters from the first world war your country needs Wayne Rooney he's a precious talent look after him and Rooney didn't forget that and Beckham didn't forget the support that that Sven had given him I mean the fact I mean what an amazing compliment to someone that that David Beckham were the world's biggest superstars sporting or otherwise flew out to see Sven in his dying days and took over I think six seven bottles of wine all from a vintage that of a year that meant something special to Sven and that is high performance that is high praise and that is the type of effect that Sven had on people yeah there were tactical shortcomings playing Paul Scholes on the left but I think there was a pursuit of excellence with Sven which I don't think he was really credit given credit for at the time and there's also you know questions around his non-football life being flawed in that sense as well Henry where do you sit in the conversation about can you be high performance and flawed at the same time completely I mean you look at the greatest geniuses in any walk of life they've all had sort of quirks I mean the greatest two players well the greatest player I ever covered was Diego Maradona I mean you know if you if you want flaws I mean you know he's he's got quite a few or had quite a few I mean Pelé the great Pelé for me the greatest footballer of all time I'm not quite old enough to have covered his career but you look at you know he had one or two flaws as well so yeah I mean people at the top They've definitely got quirks.

19:45Coming back to Sven, yeah. I mean, look, he enjoyed life and he enjoyed beautiful women and he enjoyed champagne and he would toast life with a bottle of champagne, a good bottle of champagne when he lost his job. You know, so, I mean, in a way, Sven was a winner on and off the pitch. And how do you think history will remember him then, Henry? History will remember Sven kindly because of the way he departed this world, because of the way he lived his life, because of the affection that you saw it in the outpouring. I mean, he was just, yeah, he enjoyed life. And he was great fun. There was a certain grace and a charm and a humility to Sven.

20:24And I think maybe that's reflected the background that he came from. Maybe it's a Swedish thing, but he literally grew up in the woods. I went to his house once and you have to fly to another country and then drive by being stuck in a Volvo ad through sort of hundreds of miles of trees to get to his place. And just walking around the local town with him, he knew everyone and they were just so proud of him. So even though this was a man who was front page news for about 20 years of his working life, he was still just Svenes from Torosby, from Sunna, a local boy made good who hadn't forgotten his roots, who came back to a place he loved.

21:05And they loved him. and you know what high performance is not simply what you do in the 90 minutes it's what you do in life and I think Sven won on both what lovely reflections Henry thank you so much for taking the time oh my absolutely my pleasure um look Damien that brings us pretty much to the end of this short episode of high performance what would you like to leave people thinking about when it comes to the life that Sven lived well I think it was an incredibly rich life he's a lad that's come from a small town in Sweden and conquered the heights of football you know he's got to some of the biggest positions in the world he's won a lot of trophies along the way so that's incredible when we look at it through that lens but let's also understand that there is always a price to be paid and what I like about this documentary that Whisper have made and what Sven is willing to share with us is what the cost was and whether that's in terms of to his personal relationships with his family or to other people we just I think understanding that and understanding that nothing comes for free especially not high performance I think that's a really honest message that Sven's leaving us all with my sort of final thoughts on Sven are that I disagree with him when he said at the beginning of the documentary that maybe his life was too good and he had to pay the price for that.

22:24I don't think that there is that kind of carmic payback in life. I think that what I really did learn from Sven, though, is the fact that he embraced everything that he was. You know, when the documentary covers his colourful sex life, what does he say? Sex is one of many good things in life for all of us. You know, he absolutely accepted everything that he was, everything that he did. and I think too many of us are happy to accept certain parts of who we are but we're not actually able to fully say you know what every part of me makes up the person that I am the bad bits as well as the good the flawed and the imperfect as well as the perfect and I think that the lesson from Sven is if you can accept yourself every single part of yourself I think that when the time does come and the end is near I think it leaves you in a place of of calmness and contentment and I think that the way that Sven signed off from the documentary and from his life is a good example of the fact that he did have that calm contentment and I feel that we should finish with Sven sharing his thoughts.

23:31Damien thanks ever so much. Thanks Jake I've really enjoyed reflecting on the life of a great mum. And here he is the former England manager Sven-Jørgen Eriksson who has sadly passed away.

24:12Hopefully at the end people will say, yeah, he was a good man. But everyone will not say that.

24:24I hope you will remember me as a positive guy trying to do everything he could do. Don't be sorry. smile

24:41thank you for everything coaches, players the crowds been fantastic take care of yourself and take care of your life and live it

25:05Bye.