Today's Football Talk | Eriksson's regrets in the eyes of Chinese fans born in the 1980s

     Eriksson passed away at the age of 76, which is really a pity. In my time watching football, I also left some regrets.

     Today's football talk has ideas. The first regret is that Eriksson was a representative figure of Chinese football in his later years. He coached three teams, Guangzhou R&F, Shanghai SIPG and Shenzhen Kaisa, but none of them won the Chinese Super League championship. During his time at Guangzhou R&F, he finished third and had the Guangzhou derby of "eating, sleeping and playing against Evergrande". In November 2014, SIPG Group completed the acquisition of Shanghai East Asia Football Club and announced that Eriksson would coach the team. In the 2015 season, he won the second place and the 2016 season, he won the third place. That was the era of Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao. What if Eriksson was the head coach of Guangzhou Evergrande?

      The second regret is that the time he worked with Sun Jihai was a bit short. After Thaksin bought Manchester City in the summer of 2007, he invited Eriksson to come out, but Sun Jihai started only 7 times in the 07/08 season, when Joel Luka was in the team. Although Sun Jihai performed well in his 150th England milestone appearance, Sun Jihai had already decided to leave the team. A month later, in a friendly match between Hong Kong and South China, Eriksson put the captain's armband on Sun Jihai's arm. Sun Jihai became the captain of Manchester City for the first time in his Manchester City farewell match. After the game, Eriksson and Sun Jihai said goodbye in the locker room, and people later knew that this was also Eriksson's last game in Manchester City. Joel Luka also transferred to Tottenham at the last minute of that summer window.

      The third regret is that Eriksson did not lead the strongest England in the eyes of our post-80s generation to win the championship. From 2001 to 2006, Eriksson was the first foreign head coach of the England team. In 2002, even the Chinese team entered the World Cup. It was Beckham's goal at the last minute that won England a ticket. Unfortunately, if Eriksson could get 3 points from his home team Sweden in the group stage, he would not have met the talented champion Brazil in the quarter-finals; if they avoided the French team in the 2004 European Championship draw, they might not have been eliminated by the host Portugal on penalties in the quarter-finals; if Beckham's cross before leaving the field in the 2006 World Cup was judged as a handball by the opponent, or Rooney was not sent off, would England still fall on the penalty spot? This is football, and it is also the regret that Eriksson left for me, a post-80s fan.

      He has many regrets, such as being a Liverpool fan for more than 60 years, but never having the opportunity to coach the Red Army. In the last journey of his life, Eriksson listened to more than 50,000 fans singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" for him on the sidelines. He laughed and applauded several times, and also burst into tears several times. Only with personal fragments of memory, I bid farewell to Eriksson, an old friend of Chinese football. You will never walk alone.