Sven-Göran Eriksson appeared on Good Morning Britain today and revealed he’d asked ABBA to record a World Cup song for England, but the FA disallowed it.
Sven told Kate Garraway and Ben Shephard, “I worked with a close friend of Benny in Abba and one day we phoned up Benny and asked, ‘Would you like to do a big song before a big tournament?’ I think it was a World Cup, and Benny said, ‘Of course, I will do that for free, that would be great.’ And then I went to the board of the FA and told them, ‘ABBA is willing to do the song’ and they said, ‘No, we cannot use Swedish singers to do that song, it must be English.’
“It was a pity, but I understand.”
Sven appeared alongside Harry Redknapp on GMB to talk about Soccer Aid for UNICEF 2021. And Harry commented on Sven’s ABBA revelation, saying, “Having just given the job to a Swedish manager, it seems strange that you can’t give a song to a Swedish band, it’s crazy really, isn’t it?”
Harry added: “I love them, it’s happy music innit? I love it when I can listen to ABBA – ‘Waterloo’ and all the great songs.” Talking about Soccer Aid 2021, Sven – who’s managing the England team – said training was going “very good”. He revealed, “Hopefully we’ll be ready for the big match tomorrow. I like it very much.
“They [the team] want to win, that’s for sure. It was more serious than I thought before I came here and that’s good. They’re trying very hard in training to impress me, because they want to play and they don’t want to play for five minutes… the most important thing is all the money going to a good cause.”
Harry, who’s managing the World XI team, added, “We’ve got some good lads, some good people in the team. The girls are good. I’ve got Judy Murray on the team – she’s fantastic. It’s good to have her involved.”
Good Morning Britain, weekdays from 6 am on ITV
