In the days after the sad passing of former England manager, Sven-Göran Eriksson, relatively few of the many articles penned zeroed in on his impact in Serie A and how Italy became something of an adopted homeland for him. And perhaps nowhere was that impact felt more keenly than the sky blue side of Rome, after he went back on his word to Blackburn and decided he'd rather not sample the delights of Lancashire after leaving Sampdoria.
Handing the hotpot to Roy Hodgson and returning to Rome- where he'd already tried four seasons with Roma and not been able to repeat the success he'd enjoyed in his first job outside Sweden, at Benfica, a solitary Coppa Italia was his only bit of silverware before departing for a short stint with Fiorentina.
In a piece for Coaches Voice, he would later remember the beginnings of his time in Rome-
“Serie A was the best league in the world when Roma offered me the job of manager.
All of the best players went there. I was managing Benfica when they knocked out Roma in the UEFA Cup quarter finals the year before, which is the reason that that offer was made. When it came, in 1984, I took it – it was time to move.
I joined a good team, but an old team. They had had success with Nils Liedholm, another Swedish coach. A year before I arrived they had won the Italian league; the following season they played in the final of the European Cup, where they lost on penalties to Liverpool.
It was a team full of success, full of great players, and names. They felt like they were the kings of Rome, and I came there with other ideas.
I wanted them to run more, and be different. I struggled a lot for the whole first year –sometimes I questioned if going to Italy was the right move. “
The man who would later become Sven “Gordon”, to Soccer AM viewers, would win another Coppa Italia, his only trophy with Sampdoria over a six season stay after returning to Italian soil following a return to Portugal and Benfica. All before opting to see the Rome derby from the other side of the divide in 1997.
Finishing fourth in that first season, Lazio would rise two places the next, missing out on what would have been just a second league title by a point to AC Milan, though they did manage to add the Italian Super Cup and UEFA Cup-Winners Cup to the trophy cabinet. Beating Real Mallorca in the last final of that particular competition before it was consigned to European football's dustbin…
Top scorer in that campaign was Marcelo Salas, the Chilean showing just why a hefty fee of $20.5 million had been agreed to prise him away from River Plate with twenty-four goals in all competitions. He was In partnership with Christian Vieri, another big-money buy from Atlético Madrid after a season's stay in Spain, though his time at the Stadio Olimpico was similarly short lived as he would be on the move again after just the one campaign and twelve goals from twenty-two league games, huffing his way to Inter Milan after accusing club chairman Sergio Cragnotti of lying to him.
In so doing he funded a few running repairs, enabling the Biancocelesti to bring in Juan Sebastián Verón, fresh from a season with Parma, Simeone Inzaghi via Piacenza and Diego Simeone coming in from Inter, all of whom would play their part in an ultimately successful tilt at the Scudetto. Earning the men who got them over the line a place alongside the only other Lazio team to do it in the 1973/74 season, the three new boys all went on to score in the final game of that massive middle finger to both Milan clubs and their neighbours across the city!
It could be said that this was the best possible way to make up for the massive disappointment of the previous season, having actually led the way for most of it before Milan stole a march. Only four league defeats and a few frustrating draws kept Lazio from getting their hands on the league a season earlier. And it was the one after that would have the English FA purring loudly enough to make the man who delivered it their country's first foreign coach,and possibly the only one to conduct an affair with one of the secretaries while he was at it. Ooh, matron!
But before he could become many a tabloid writer's wet dream, he had to sign off (and preferably in style). Romantics might argue that it was written in the stars that he would, his club's centenary season the perfect time to deliver a league and cup double, the UEFA Super Cup a nice bit of window dressing on top as they beat Champions League winners Manchester United 1-0.
Just two domestic losses all season- the most painful just ten games in as they lost the first derby of the season 4-1 to Roma- Siniša Mihajlović's penalty a mere consolation as Marco Delvecchio and Vincenzo Montella helped themselves to two goals each and early Roman bragging rights. A 0-0 draw at home to Juventus the following week would offer an early indication of just how close the eventual title race would be, as Lazio would do to Juve what Milan had previously inflicted upon them and snatch it by a solitary but all-important point!
A run to the Champions League quarter- finals, where they were dumped out by Valencia, was, if we are to judge a remarkably successful season with any degree of harshness, their one moment of weakness in what must have felt like a dream even to those at the heart of it.
Justifiably, its architect would look back on it somewhat fondly, having come a long way from not even being allowed to sit on the bench when he first arrived in Italy to directing proceedings from it, even if a few of his early decisions initially mystified Sergio Cragnotti, the man who brought him back to Rome, before his forward thinking paid off.
“We took in some fantastic players – Juan Sebastián Verón, Siniša Mihajlović', Roberto Mancini. Great players. It became a winning team, as it should have been.
We started the 1999/2000 season steadily, but I always thought that we could win Lo Scudetto.
We should have won it the year before, but we had failed just at the end. We were a lot of points behind Juventus. But I still said to the players: “We can win this.”
I don’t know how many of them thought it was possible. The owner said: “Sven, it’s gone again.” I said: “No. We can still win it.”
And underpinning that was a simple change from what had come before- “From good football, we started to play brilliant football. We played a lot of games without losing; it just went one way – win, after win, after win.”
The last of those, 3-0 at home to Reggina sparked absolute jubilation before an anticlimactic parting of the ways in January of the following year. When Eriksson was asked to resign following a 2-1 defeat at home to Napoli in what would be his last game on the Stadio Olimpico bench before boarding the plane to London to replace Kevin Keegan on the Wembley equivalent. Ultimately swapping a stint as footballing emperor of Rome for an all-pervading sense of “so close and yet so far” as the then-latest man to take on international football's most poisoned chalice in the Three Lions.
Regardless, he surely deserves at least a little better than the damning verdict of BBC Sport's Phil McNulty immediately post-his last exit from FA headquarters, namely that "he will be remembered as a failure and a mighty pricey one at that".
Italian football, though, will no doubt remember him at least a little kinder. Arrivederci, then, to a Lazio legend.