Once mighty Sven has fallen so far

With the furore surrounding the England manager’s job all over the newspapers last week, another story passed by relatively unnoticed. Ironically it was about a man who once used to call himself the England manager.

Sven-Goran Eriksson, according to Leeds chairman Ken Bates, applied for the current vacancy at Elland Road only to receive an instant flat-out rejection. This in itself speaks volumes for how the once mighty Swede has fallen. 

Formerly one of the most coveted managers in the world, the former England boss has only been able to stand back and watch his career take a drastic slide to near oblivion since he left ‘the hardest job in football’ back in 2006.

Uninspiring, disappointing and all too brief spells at Manchester City, Mexico, Ivory Coast and Leicester City say it all. Throw a strange few months as Director of Football at Notts County into the mix and you’ve got a very depressing few years for a man with 17 major trophies to his name. 

That the unemployed Swede was one of the first to put himself forward for the Leeds job suggests he now sees himself as a Championship-level manager. That he was turned down is purely an embarrassment, especially when Bates gives the reasoning as wanting the next appointment to be “the big one”. 

Evidently Sven’s career is all but dead and buried. Who knows, perhaps in a few years Fabio Capello will be getting told where to go by Barnsley?