There Lazio published a long interview with on its official website Sven Goran Erikssonin which the Swedish coach retraced his entire career in the capital and beyond, starting from his return to the Olimpico for the last match of the championship, in Lazio-Sassuolo:
“The return to the Olimpico was too good. They were all there, with the people singing. It was amazing, I was crying with happiness. It gives me enormous energy to feel this warmth. Congratulations to the audience, it was truly a spectacle. Lazio organized everything fantastically. I send a big hug to everyone, I thank them for the spectacle at the Olimpico and I wish them good luck for the next championship”.
“I went to Rome for the first time in the 83/84 season, when there were the UEFA Cup quarter-finals between Roma and Benfica. I told myself that in the future I would like to stay here in this city and in this stadium, the Olimpico. And I was lucky enough to coach both teams in this beautiful city. It’s clear that Lazio were incredible, three years/three and a half years in which it was all a dream. Me too. I didn’t know I was the coach who won the most ever in Rome. It’s really beautiful. They called me ‘successful loser’ because we often showed great football, but in the end we didn’t take the last decisive step to win a title. We won the Scudetto in 2000, but we should have won it the year before too.”
“I had signed for another club in England. I was returning to Genoa, where I was staying. The next day he calls me Cragnotti and says: ‘Come’. I told him that I had signed for another team, but I did everything I could not to honor that contract and in the end everything was resolved. I knew that Lazio was strong, I knew that the club was strong and I also knew that Lazio could also buy some new players. I would have done anything to go to Lazio. Luckily that’s how it went.”
“In 1984, on my first day at Roma, Falcao told me to buy Roberto Mancini. He was young, he played for Sampdoria, but I had never seen him play. He was special, a great player, a playmaker, elegant. On the pitch he was also a coach, like Falcao. He only got angry with the referee and his teammates if they didn’t do their job. When I signed for Sampdoria, Mancini and Vialli were there. Before signing the contract, however, president Mantovani told me: ‘Eriksson, if he doesn’t want to come I understand. I have to sell Vialli to Juve for the soles’. But I went anyway, we won a cup and played some great football. But there they bought a young man and then sold him. When I had the chance to go to Lazio, I took it straight away. And I said to Mancini: ‘Come on, come with me’. He wanted another challenge before he got too old.”
“Cragnotti didn’t ask me to win the Scudetto the first year, but I told him: ‘Buy Mancini, Mihajlovic and Veron and we will win the Scudetto’. When we actually won the Scudetto, I went to Cragnotti and told him: ‘President, if he bought these three in the first year, we would have won three Scudettos!’. He looked at me and said: ‘Sven, one is enough!’ (laughs, ed.). I arrived at Lazio where there were many good players. It was a pleasure to coach them. But for me he was missing something, namely an incredible determination to go and win and also to have a locker room with more positivity.”
“There were players at Lazio, who have been there for a long time, who told me: ‘We play well, we win, but it’s like this until Christmas, after that nothing’. I told him that he couldn’t think of speaking like that. And every day it was like this. The second year I went to Cragnotti and told him that we were too negative. We needed people who made us be more positive, who raised our morale every day. The last player we bought with me on the bench was Attilio Lombardo, Mancini’s idea. He came to me and told me to buy it. I told him that he was someone who was on the bench at Sampdoria, but he told me to take him not for what he did on the pitch, but for the locker room, because he is someone who always smiles. Cragnotti agreed”.
We signed Vieri from Atletico Madrid for a huge sum, I think he was the most expensive player in the world. A year later we sold him for even more money to Inter. The team was starting to be strong: Conceicao, then Mihajlovic, who was special. We lost the ’99 Scudetto in Florence with a 1-1 draw. It was a big disappointment, we had to wait another year.”
“I remember many things about May 14, 2000, but above all about Diego Simeone. He wanted to play, he was still in the locker room. If anyone tried to talk to him before the game, he wouldn’t respond. He was so still for 45 minutes”.
“When I arrived at Sampdoria, Mihajlovic was a left attacker. But I didn’t see him dribble, he wasn’t quick. I put him as defender and he was mumbling. Then one time, when everyone was unavailable, I put him in central defense and from there he didn’t move. He came to hug me after every goal because the club had significantly increased his salary. He was one of the best central defenders in the world.”
“If you see what we have done over the years, it is difficult for any team to win 7 titles in three years, I have never managed it in my career. The team was so strong that everyone was in the national team. Each of them could say they were the strongest, pretend to play, but they didn’t. I didn’t make a deal, but it seemed like it. They accepted the bench, the substitutions, what we did in training. I talked to everyone, I asked for advice and many wanted to talk about it, but work together and with the same dedication. Thanks to them they have become so strong. The locker room was wonderful, every now and then something happened, but almost never.”
