Heartbreaking message from renowned coach: "Take care of yourself and take care of your life. And live it. Bye!"
The 76-year-old former England manager announced in January that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and has “at best” a year to live. Sven-Goran Eriksson suffering from cancer said that he did not want to be forgotten after his death.
"I had a good life," Eriksson says. "I think we are all scared of the day when we die, but life is about death as well.
You have to learn to accept it for what it is. Hopefully, at the end people will say, yeah, he was a good man, but everyone will not say that.
I hope you will remember me as a positive guy trying to do everything he could do. Don’t be sorry, smile. Thank you for everything, coaches, players, the crowds, it’s been fantastic. Take care of yourself and take care of your life. And live it. Bye.”
From his home in Sunne, the Swede sat down with a commentator to speak about life following his devastating terminal cancer diagnosis.
"You appreciate waking up in the morning and feeling well and normally you don't do that. You take it for granted," Eriksson said in the interview with Channel 4.
"In the beginning when you get the diagnosis coming from nowhere, it’s like a shock but after a while, you learn to live with it."
He added: "Today I have a normal life and I am not thinking about what's going to happen tomorrow or the day after. Otherwise, you sit down and think pity of yourself. No. Leave it.
"I don’t talk about it very much. It is what it is. I can’t beat it, probably. Anyhow, life is beautiful."
Sven-Göran Eriksson is a Swedish retired football manager and former player. After an unassuming playing career as a right-back, Eriksson went on to experience major success in club management between 1977 and 2001, winning 18 trophies with a variety of league clubs in Sweden, Portugal, and Italy.
Besides, in European competition, he won both the UEFA Cup and the European Cup Winners' Cup (the last edition of the latter trophy before its abolition) and reached the final of the European Cup.
Eriksson later managed the national teams of England, Mexico, Philippines, and the Ivory Coast, as well as Manchester City and Leicester City in England.
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