It is 16 years now since the Football Association had the temerity to appoint its first foreign England manager, namely Sven-Goran Eriksson, and it can be enlightening to look back at the coverage of the time and remind yourself how many people seemed to think it was the end of civilisation as we knew it.
The Daily Mail is a good place to start when it comes to the froth of moral indignation that greeted the Swede. “England’s humiliation knows no end. In their trendy eagerness to appoint a designer foreigner, did the FA pause for so much as a moment to consider the depth of this insult to our national pride? We sell our birthright down the fjord to a nation of seven million skiers and hammer-throwers who spend half their year living in total darkness.”
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