Sven-Goran Eriksson has ‘at best a year left to live’ after terminal cancer diagnosis

Sign up to Miguel Delaney’s Reading the Game newsletter sent straight to your inbox for free

Sign up to Miguel’s Delaney’s free weekly newsletter

Sven-Goran Eriksson has revealed he has “at best a year left to live” after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The former England manager told Swedish radio station P1: “Everyone understands that I have an illness that is not good. Everyone guesses it’s cancer and it is. But I have to fight as long as I can. [I have] maybe at best a year, at worst a little less, or at best maybe even longer. You can’t be absolutely sure. It is better not to think about it.”

Eriksson collapsed while on a 5km last year, which prompted doctors to investigate. They told the 75-year-old he had suffered a stroke, and subsequently discovered the disease. “They don’t know how long I had cancer, maybe a month or a year,” he said.

Eriksson had been working as a sporting director for Swedish side Karlstad and stepped back from his role.

He said he is trying to maintain a positive mindset. “You can trick your brain. See the positive in things, don’t wallow in adversity, because this is the biggest adversity of course, but make something good out of it.”

Eriksson’s long management career took in Swedish side Gothenburg, Portuguese giants Benfica, a host of Italian clubs including Roma and their city rivals Lazio, as well as Premier League sides Manchester City and Leicester. He also coached Mexico, Ivory Coast and the Philippines, but is most famous in Britain for taking charge of England’s golden generation.

David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Paul Scholes, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry, Ashley Cole, Michael Owen, Gary Neville and a prodigiously talented Wayne Rooney made up one of England’s most talented ever squads. However, Eriksson could only steer them to the quarter-final stage in his three major tournaments in charge, the 2002 and 2006 World Cups and Euro 2004.

The manager was criticised for his tactical inflexibility, sticking to a rigid and unambitious 4-4-2 which failed to get the best out of England’s star players. Other reasons since put forwards for England’s failure to win a major trophy were the lack of balance in the side, with an overflow of quality in central positions, and the factions within the squad owing to their Premier League rivalries.

Eriksson added: “I was fully healthy and then I collapsed and fainted and ended up at the hospital. And it turned out that I had cancer. The day before I had been out running five kilometres. It just came from nothing. And that makes you shocked. I’m not in any major pain. But I’ve been diagnosed with a disease that you can slow down but you cannot operate. So it is what it is.”