Top 115 Quotes & Sayings by Sven-Goran Eriksson

With England, every time we lost I was 'not passionate.' But I tried to say we won a lot of games when I was the same.

How many Messis do you have in India if they had the chance to play?

I've always been a Liverpool fan.

After three years with Roma, I spent two seasons at Fiorentina. I could have stayed there for longer, but they only had ambitions to be in the middle of the table - not to win anything. Their ambition was to not go down.

The pressure on the English national team has always been very big at all the big tournaments.

Personally, I was oblivious to any financial hardships that my parents endured.

England has always been famous for great goalkeepers, before I came. We had good goalkeepers, but we didn't have the big world-class 'keeper, maybe.

The World Cup is the biggest party in football and it's a party for the world, it's incredible. It goes for a month and there is a huge amount of interest. It's the greatest thing you can do and it's beautiful.

I always thought I did a good job with England. But people at the time didn't think so. They had had enough of the Swedish guy only making the quarter-finals.

I had a contract with England, it was going to finish, and in football you can't really wait until your contract runs out.

Maybe I trust people too much.

Italian football in the eighties and nineties was the most beautiful league in the world. The hardest, most beautiful of all.

I like challenges, yes.

In Italy, so long as you are not criminal, they couldn't care less about your private life. It's when you lose a football match that they criticise you - a lot.

I always treated my players like men.

China, if they decide to do something, they do it. Not only in football but whatever it is. If you think about the billion population, there must be Messis or Ronaldos out there. There must be many talented football players out there.

It's always nice to see Brazil playing football.

My private life has absolutely nothing to do with my football.

My parents would make the journey across the border to Norway to buy butter and flour, staples that were cheaper there than in Sweden.

I liked friendly games, but I took them like a test to test new players. People didn't like that very much.

The player picked as No 23 in the squad will not win the World Cup for you.

You know I never hate anyone in my life. I don't think I have many enemies but I hate Samir Khan because you can't treat people like he has done.

Sometimes I thought that maybe it would have been better to stay in Italy, to stay at Lazio.

If I am going to write a book, which I have done, I think we have to get it right - whatever has been written about me, about football, about my private life.

I think, that it's sort of a dream, for many coaches to have a long contract with African countries. The problem in Africa, they do the qualifiers with some coaches, and when the World Cup comes, they change to have bigger names. And then, they recruit a coach for two, three months and when the World Cup finish, they send him back.

Sooner or later, an African team will win the World Cup.

If my style is typically Swedish, I don't know. But I never shouted in all my life at players and I never did it at my children.

Italian footballers can take a coffee and sit for two hours talking, laughing.

My worst moment was in 2006, in Germany, without any doubt! The defeat in the knockout phase of the World Cup 2006 against Portugal.

To leave a job with a bad result is, I think, the worst thing in life to do. They will always remember you as a loser.

To be a manager, you have to perform always. You cannot live in history. It's now and tomorrow that counts.

When I was in Italy in the 90s, early 2000s, everybody wanted to go to Italy, all the players.

I don't feel like I'm a failure for what I did with England. No I don't feel like that.

Serie A was the best league in the world when Roma offered me the job of manager in 1984.

If you want to keep up with the changes, then you have to watch as much football as you can. Live is the best way but also on television. All the best teams: Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and now City. What are they doing? If possible, go and see them training. You can always learn.

When we fail at something it's because it needs work.

Sir Alex Ferguson must be very high up on the list of greatest managers ever. Then there is Fabio Capello, and people forget how much Giovanni Trapattoni achieved at Inter and especially Juventus.

You know if you go far in the World Cup you are away for almost two months and I think it's against human nature, not to have families there.

If Rooney had been Italian, he would have been loved like Francesco Totti was at Roma.

I have a big TV screen and I sit there and watch the Premier League and I get angry sometimes - 'I'm better than that guy sitting there.' Of course, I am joking. But I analyse. I look at it technically, how they play, how they defend, how they attack, why did he change that player? That's the only way I can look at it after all these years.

When you go to a World Cup, the whole nation should be behind the team - and then the team have to play their part, too.

No-one wants to finish a job badly. If you know that you are going to finish your job in six months, then you want to finish well.

Yes, England lost to Iceland at Euro 2016 but you need to look at what Iceland had, as well as what England didn't. Maybe Iceland were not technically strong but they looked very strong together and England were not the only ones surprised by them.

Sometimes things go wrong in 'football. You can lose games, own-goals, you can buy the wrong players. But you do it in the right spirit and you do it honestly. That is not how it went wrong at Notts County.

My private life, I prefer to have that private.

There is so many good people in Africa. And a huge talent among the football players.

My second year in Rome was very good. Back then, a striker was a striker. Strikers scored goals; they didn't defend. Today this is normal, but it wasn't at that time. If you wanted to play my style of football you couldn't have old players or famous players who were unwilling to do the job both ways: attacking and also defending.

Before England, I had never been sacked in my life.

You don't criticise Totti in Italy. There might have been reasons to, sometimes, but you don't touch him.

England was the biggest coaching job that I had. You know, in England, the football is connected to all the things in a incredible way. I'm very proud to have been there.

You look at the way some of the big English players in the past, like Rooney and David Beckham, have been criticised and you have to ask: 'What do you want these players to be?'

I must say, the standard of football we play in League Two is better than I thought. I think, if you compared it with the fourth division in other countries, such as Italy, Germany and Spain, League Two is much, much better - and that's very positive. The intensity and the tempo is as high as the Premier League.

From 1997 I was at Lazio for three and a half years and they were lucky times - a beautiful time. The chairman did almost everything I asked. We won seven trophies and were excellent.

Over time I realised that the most important thing is not the system but the players you have. Then you make a system for them.

The treatment of Wayne Rooney told me something about the way England fans view the national team.

The big question for me is - are the players happy? Because in my mind it is all about building the right relationship with your players and creating the right atmosphere.

Football is important, football is my life, I love it but life is more important than football.

I loved managing England more than anything but there were times during those five years when I thought, 'Why did I leave Italy?' because you are criticised so much.

It's not that India, China and the United States need football, but football needs these three countries. Because it will be even bigger.

I would certainly never walk past a player in the corridor and not speak. Why should I do that? They have to play for you so of course I would speak to them. If you want them to do everything they can for you, then you have to treat them with respect.