Sven-Goran Eriksson died with £8.6m debt as family lose entire estate
Sven-Goran Eriksson died £8.6m in debt, Swedish documents have revealed.
Former England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson died millions of pounds in debt, Swedish documents have revealed. The football coach died from pancreatic cancer last August.
Eriksson’s estate was published on Tuesday, showing that he died £8.6million (88 million kronor) in debt. He had 66 million kronor in assets but the estate has a deficit of £3.7m (51 million kronor).
According to the inventory, the largest debt item by far is tax owed in the UK, which totals around £7.2m (99 million kronor). The financial details have been filed with the Swedish Tax Authority.
Eriksson earned huge sums of money in a successful career but lost £10m as part of a high-profile scam case over a decade ago. In 2011, he sued one of his financial advisors, Samir Khan, who had accepted unlimited access to Eriksson's wealth and proceeded to blow £10m on dubious investments, including property schemes.
Writing in 2013, Eriksson said of the episode: "I was not interested in the details: if he said that an investment was sound, I trusted him. I didn’t even read through the long contracts. Sometimes, he’d fax over just one page for me to sign.
The truth is that I never cared about money. Not one bit. Suffice to say that Samir caught on pretty quickly."
It has been reported that Eriksson's Bjorkefors has been put up for sale. The property is located on Lake Fryken in Varmland.
Eriksson most notably managed England between 2001 and 2006. He returned to England as part of a tour of some of his former clubs before his death, and managed boyhood club Liverpool in a charity match.
Speaking in an emotional documentary about his life, Eriksson bidded an emotional farewell to his fans. "I had a good life. 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," he said.
"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."