Sven-Goran Eriksson, former England manager, has revealed he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and has around a year at most to live.
Eriksson worked as England’s first foreign manager between 2001 and 2006 and left his most recent role as sporting director at Swedish club Karlstad last year due to health issues.
The 75-year-old made the revelation while talking to Swedish radio station P1. He said he had been given the shock news after he fainted on a 5k run, and had previously been in a good state of health.
He led England to one of their best results, a 5-1 win over Germany in Munich in September 2001, and took the Three Lions to three consecutive quarter-final berths at major tournaments.
Eriksson said: “Everyone can see that I have a disease that’s not good, and everyone supposes that it’s cancer, and it is. But I have to fight it as long as possible.
“I know that in the best case it’s about a year, in the worst case even less. Or in the best case I suppose even longer. I don’t think the doctors I have can be totally sure, they can’t put a day on it.
“It’s better not to think about it. You have to trick your brain. I could go around thinking about that all the time and sit at home and be miserable and think I’m unlucky and so on.
“It’s easy to end up in that position. But no, see the positive sides of things and don’t bury yourself in setbacks, because this is the biggest setback of them all of course.
“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.”
