Sven-Goran Eriksson: Managerial great saved his best until last - Stuart Rayner

But he was perhaps at his best when he knew his life was ending.

The statement announcing his death on Monday spoke of a "long illness" with pancreatic cancer. By the time he went public with it, in January 2024, he seemed at peace with it.

He continued to live his life as he always had, for maximum enjoyment, fulfilling a lifetime ambition in March by managing the club he supported as a boy, Liverpool – or rather their legends team – at Anfield, and filming a documentary.

“I had a good life," he reflected in it. "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 remember me as a positive guy.

"Don’t be sorry, smile. Thank you for everything – coaches, players, the crowds, it’s been fantastic. Take care of yourself and your life. And live it. Bye.”

His last words to David Beckham were 'It will be okay'.

A humdrum player at best, Eriksson was an exceptional club manager for Benfica (twice), Roma, Fiorentina, Sampdoria and Lazio.

England’s football was rarely as exciting as Eriksson’s life.

It had highlights – a 2002 World Cup revenge win over Argentina with Beckham scoring the penalty, and a 2001 5-1 qualifying win which did not stop Germany lifting the trophy.

But Eriksson could not make the golden generation anything more than a quarter-final team, injuries, penalties and Portugal going against him as the Three Lions went out in the last eight of all three of his major tournaments.

His niceness seemed partly to blame.

“England needed Winston Churchill but got Iain Duncan Smith,” Gareth Southgate would later deny saying about his half-time team talk versus Brazil in 2002.

His unwillingness to upset saw Paul Scholes shunted to the left of a 4-4-2 so as not to have to choose between Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard. He indulged the celebrity culture which saw WAG mean something other than what a dog did with its tail.

Without the shield of success, dalliances with Ulrika Jonsson, FA secretary Faria Alam, fake sheikhs and even Chelsea saw patience snap, and he joined Manchester City.

Tellingly, his parting words were a plea to the media not to "kill" Wayne Rooney, sent off in a second successive quarter-final exit to Portugal.

His post-England career never lived up to what went before, his fondness for money even causing him to become Notts County's director of football for seven months.

Leicester City, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Mexico, Ivory Coast and Philippines filled his CV. He was Karlstad’s sporting director until illness intervened.

Despite his wandering eye and hunger for money, the word in most in the tributes was "gentleman".

Football has lost a good manager, the world has lost a good man.