Football
‘He said, ‘I will kill you’- When Sir Alex Ferguson went ballistic at Sven Goran Eriksson
The game of Football is played on the field and is one of the most popular sports in the world. It has a lot of years of history behind it. The captains take the control of the team on the field but most of the control outside the field rests with the manager. He is the one in charge of strategies, tactics and substitutions in a big way.
Two people who have had a great name in the history of football have been Sir Alex Ferguson and Sven Goran Eriksson. Once, Sir Alex Ferguson told Sven-Goran Eriksson that he would kill him if he took out Wayne Rooney for England.
Sven Goran Eriksson, who managed the England National Team for a long spell of five years, jogged down the memory lane as he recalled a time when Sir Alex Ferguson went mad at him over the phone as he tried to stop Eriksson from calling up Wayne Rooney.
Rooney became a key player for club and country pretty quickly after he burst on to the scene. Ferguson had a golden touch of putting his players in their tracks and stopped them from going away and playing for their country because he wanted them to live and breathe only at Manchester United.
Sven-Goran Eriksson had nerves of steel and stood up to Sir Alex Ferguson on that occasion,
“With Alex, the amazing thing was it was seven o’clock in the morning or earlier. Always. When he was angry,” Eriksson said.
“And never ‘Hello Sven, how are you?’ It was “whuurssshhhh” [yelling]. I thought he should kill me.
“He said, ‘I will kill you. You are finished.’ But I represented England and you have to stand up.
“What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong and when you say ‘Don’t pick Rooney because I’m going to kill you’… I said, ‘F*** off, what’s going on with you?’
“And he was screaming. Whenever he got like that… it has no meaning.
“That’s why I said, ‘Alex, I will pick Rooney. Now, have a nice holiday. Ciao, bye.'”
