He Is So Jolly Unusual for This Job

You picture the national soccer coach of England, and I don’t know, you just picture some sort of venerable, weather-beaten, charismatic figure with a quick eloquence and a knighthood just around the bend if only he can win a World Cup or maybe get close.

Then you arrive in England, you see Sven-Goran Eriksson on TV, and you see him again, and again, and still you say, “That’s their coach?”

It’s not that he’s clueless; here’s one Swede who likes Buddhist poetry and won Italy’s Serie A with Lazio. It’s just that . . .

That’s their coach?

In England’s way next stands Luiz Felipe Scolari, head coach, Portugal, the same Scolari who beat Eriksson’s England with Brazil in the 2002 World Cup quarterfinals, the same Scolari who beat England with Portugal in the Euro 2004 quarterfinals, the same Scolari England tried to hire last spring during a coaching-change process of accomplished lunacy.

That Scolari.

Against this Eriksson.

He has been England’s coach for 5 1/2 years and the fans have never really warmed to him because he’s just not warm, but he’s still the coach.

It’s widely believed that Eriksson lacks a coherent approach for this World Cup, that he didn’t choose enough strikers and instead chose a 17-year-old he hasn’t used, that he shouldn’t still be tinkering with England’s lineup every game, and that his team has played unsightly, uninspired soccer, but he’s still the coach.

He hasn’t yet surpassed a major quarterfinal in a country that doesn’t fancy itself an exhilarated quarterfinalist, but he’s still the coach.

Spending his mid-to-late-50s in England, he had a publicized fling with a football association secretary, not to be confused with his publicized fling with a TV host, quite apart from his long-term relationship with an Italian lawyer, even though nobody ever looked at him and thought, huh, Brad Pitt, and the secretary told the tabloids how he first rubbed her leg at a Christmas dinner, and how she also had a fling with an association executive, who lost his job.

Eriksson went to Dubai famously in January and had a series of meetings with someone who claimed to be a wealthy Arab businessman interested in buying a club and hiring Eriksson but who turned out to be an undercover London tabloid reporter. That’s when he and the football association announced he’d stop being the coach, but only after the World Cup. That’s when the association interviewed at least four English coaches for the job, then wooed Scolari in Portugal in April, whereupon Scolari alleged himself scared off by the 20 English reporters in his front yard.

So England promoted Eriksson’s assistant, Steve McClaren, but then, at the World Cup, Scolari told the BBC he didn’t come because he couldn’t sign onto England while still coaching Portugal under contract until July 31, which would’ve made for one preposterous quarterfinal.

And Eriksson’s still the coach. And he’s three tricky but attainable wins from an eternal place in English history alongside the country’s only World Cup-winning coach, the venerable Sir Alf Ramsey.

And life is so absurd.