Sven-Göran Eriksson on life in Serie A: ‘It was the best period of my career’

Sven-Göran Eriksson knew little about Italian football when he joined Roma in the summer of 1984. Growing up in Sweden, he could watch only English football. However, he did have a deep knowledge of Roma, as his Benfica side had played them in the quarter-finals of the Uefa Cup in 1983.

“We went to spy on them as preparation,” he laughs. The mission obviously worked, as Benfica won the first leg at the Stadio Olimpico, before a draw at home sealed qualification to the semi-finals. Eriksson’s side eventually lost to Anderlecht in the final, but he had made an impression in Rome.

He took the job after Roma’s soul-crushing defeat to Liverpool in the European Cup final at their own stadium. “It was difficult to motivate the players following that final,” he says. “Many of them had won everything with the club and there was a loss of hunger. In the first six months I wondered if I’d made the right choice.”

Eriksson also had to deal with his star player, Roberto Falcao, missing most of the campaign through injury: “He only played seven or eight games that season. He had a knee problem and the rest of the team looked to him as the leader. They told me: ‘Mister, we cannot play without Falcao.’ And when he did play, you could see the difference.”

Eriksson recalls one of the times Falcao did play – a 2-1 victory at Napoli. “He was better than even Maradona that day, which shows how good he was. He was a phenomenal footballer.” Eriksson faced Maradona a few times while in charge of Roma and Fiorentina. How did he prepare? “It was extremely difficult. You could mark zonally but, if you gave him space, he would destroy you. If you man-marked him, he would also destroy you. If you put two, three or four men on him, it didn’t matter.