Tord Grip: English style shapes Grip's football philosophy

'My favourite team in the 1970s was Liverpool. The way they and others played, with zonal marking, was new'

Those who opposed the appointment of Sven Goran Eriksson, believing that the coach of the England football team should be made in England, would doubtless disapprove of the entryphone system outside the Football Association's plush headquarters in Soho Square, which reads "siedle-beschriftungsserviche – bitte wenden". The Liechtensteiners who play England this afternoon would feel thoroughly at home standing on the doorstep.

Still, the video footage being shown on a rolling tape in the lobby is emphatically made in England: from Charlie George's idiosyncratic FA Cup final goal celebrations, to Wayne Rooney scoring for Everton against Arsenal at Goodison Park earlier this season.

I am watching Rooney's goal for the fourth time, and frankly looking forward to the fifth and sixth showings, when a secretary disturbs my reverie, to take me upstairs to meet Tord Grip, Eriksson's assistant and éminence grise, the Laurens van der Post to his Prince Charles.

She shows me into a small room, featureless but for three chairs, a table, a large box on the floor and a small, magnetic football pitch fixed to the wall. The box, I notice, has a Fortnum & Mason label, and is addressed to a Mr D Platt of Alderley Edge, Cheshire. But just as I am speculating on what David Platt, for it is surely he, might be receiving from Fortnum & Mason – specialist teas, a brace of partridge, Gentleman's Relish? – in walks a trim, shortish man of 64, wearing a smart blazer and a kindly smile.

First things first; I ask Tord Grip about the match against Liechtenstein.

How on earth will he and Eriksson prepare for a match against a team so manifestly inferior? After all, it must in a sense be easier to send them out against Argentina or Brazil, with everything to gain, rather than against a side with nothing to lose.

"No," he says, "it is no different. We won't change the system just because it is Liechtenstein. We will play the way we have played until now. And we must make sure the players are focused on this game, and not on the Turkey game [next Wednesday]. They will need to concentrate, not to let in silly goals."

Clearly, there are players missing, such as Sol Campbell, who would always feature in a first-choice England XI. But then there is Eriksson's first-choice XI, and there is Grip's, and for that matter there is yours and mine, and they are probably not the same.

"In my head I have the best England XI, yes," he says. "If all the players are fit, yes." Then who, I ask, is in his head alongside Michael Owen? In Eriksson's head it appears to be Emile Heskey, but is Grip similarly enamoured? There is a long pause. "It depends if Michael Owen's partner is in form." Assuming that he is, that they all are? "I can't tell you. I can tell Sven but I don't think I can tell all your readers."

Then let's name some more names. Is David Seaman his first-choice goalkeeper? "When Seaman is fit, I still think he is the best, yes." And might he soon favour young Rooney as Owen's strike partner, if not today or next week, then not too far beyond? "Well, he is a very good player, a modern player, strong with quick feet. But I have seen too little of him. Many times he just plays the last 10 or 15 minutes, and..." – a little self-conscious smile – "we don't always stay those last 10 minutes.

"And we still have to find out his mentality. There are three things a footballer needs: talent, training and attitude. It is no good if one of these things is missing. Because if you don't have the right attitude you will probably miss some training sessions and then, then you are out."

Have he and Eriksson picked anyone who has turned out to lack the right attitude, I ask, knowing of course that he will not identify them. "No, not in the international team. You have to be in a club to see how players change when they have won five games in a row, and then how they react to losing five games in a row. Because that will happen if you are long enough in football. Even players who show the right attitude when they are winning can be too arrogant, not humble enough, and when they are losing they can't stand it."

This pair of phlegmatic Swedes, by contrast, appear to take both winning and losing with the same equanimity, even if they are throbbing with emotion somewhere deep down. I don't suppose they ever exactly hurl tea cups at one another, but they must have disagreements? "Of course. If Sven writes down his team, and I write down my team, they will be different. Then we have some discussions, and I try to convince him. I argue for this player, that player. And sometimes I manage to persuade him. But after he's taken his decision then we stop arguing."

Of the two, Grip, who played for AIK Stockholm, was much the better footballer, winning three international caps. He first came to England in 1961, and played a few games for Aston Villa reserves. "It was marvellous," he recalls. "I couldn't speak English, but every time I went to Villa Park for training, I could communicate with the ball. But I couldn't drive either, and I think they became fed up driving me."

In 1969, he became player-manager of a Swedish Second Division club, Karlskoga, and there met a young right-back, the embodiment of determination over skill, Sven Goran Eriksson. But Eriksson thought deeply about the game and Grip reckoned he could see the makings of a decent coach. In 1976, when he went to manage Degerfors, he invited his 28-year-old protégé – who had been out of the game for a year, injured – to become his assistant. Then, when he left to work for the Swedish Football Association, Eriksson took over.

The younger man's star rose swiftly. Eriksson moved on to IFK Gothenburg, Fiorentina, Benfica, Sampdoria and Lazio, while Grip coached Malmo, then the Norwegian national team, then Sweden, as assistant to Tommy Svensson. But one day Eriksson called Grip as Grip had once called Eriksson, and invited him to become his assistant at Lazio. Together, they twice steered Lazio to the hallowed scudetto.

"Then one day Sven came to the training ground in Rome and told me that he'd had the offer from England. He said: 'Are you interested to go with me?' I said: 'Of course'. I knew he'd asked for a two-year contract at Lazio, but he didn't get it. So he said to the FA: 'Yeah, all right'. It was a marvellous opportunity.

"And for many years I had wanted to work in England. But I am a realistic person. I knew that by then it was not possible, not on my own. But I still wanted to live here for a while. Even if I was not involved in this job I would have come, if not to work then just to live here, because I am interested in theatre, and music, and football of course, and in London there is a lot of those things."

Grip – a highly cultured man, which fact should not be obscured by his fondness for playing Abba songs on the accordion – is thrilled to be living in London, and near the Royal Albert Hall to boot. Not that there is much spare time in which to pursue his other interests; he is devoted to the England cause certainly to the detriment of his social life and possibly his health, too. His heart scare last January surprised none of those who keep urging him to take things easier, perhaps by travelling to fewer games.

But work was what kept him going after his beloved wife succumbed to cancer 10 years ago. And, plainly, he also gets an enormous kick out of bringing Swedish methods to England, the more so as it was English methods, in the 1970s, that he helped to introduce to Sweden.

"My favourite team then was Liverpool," he says, adding, with a smile, that "now of course, I have no favourite. In those days, in Sweden, teams used to play the German way, man-to-man marking, with a libero. The technical director in the Swedish FA was a fan of that type of football, but the way Liverpool and other English teams played, with zonal marking, was new, and we thought very interesting.

"I brought these things into the Swedish FA, and I had a fight, it took a long time to get them to introduce them to their coaching courses. But eventually they did. Swedish teams started playing 4-4-2, with the back line high up, and as long as they didn't meet an English team they always had a chance to win. I remember seeing the game between [Eriksson's] Gothenburg and Hamburg [in the 1982 Uefa Cup final which Gothenburg won 3-0]. It was unbelievable to watch. Hamburg couldn't do anything against Gothenburg, they were so well organised. Of course, it helped that they had some very good players, like Trube [Torbjorn] Nilsson.

"Sven told me that he brought Gothenburg to play in a friendly game against Southampton, because if a Swedish side survived to the quarter-finals of a European competition in March or April, our season hadn't even started, so we had to go out and play friendly games. And in that one Trube Nilsson scored five goals, and Lawrie McMenemy came to Sven after the game and said: 'How much'?"

While he is chuckling at this story, I ask whether his football philosophy has stayed the same? "Basically it has, yes. But now, to win something you need good individual players. We will see that Liechtenstein are good organisers. You can't just go out and say 'now we are going to score six or seven goals,' because a team like Liechtenstein will know how to make it difficult to get the ball forward into their penalty area. So in the end you have to rely on individual skill, not just on organisation, because all teams have organisation.

"And the big difference today is in the back line, especially those two central defenders. They need to be good football players and it wasn't the same 20 or 30 years ago, when we maybe looked for more physical players. You didn't find these players who were good on the ball, or if you did they didn't want to stay in defence. Obviously there were exceptions, like Bobby Moore, [Franz] Beckenbauer, Colin Todd, but now we have to find more of them. Players with quick brains and quick feet."

The FA's media chief, Paul Newman, has joined us and is getting anxious; Grip has given me enough of his precious time. Newman asks me to make the next question the last. Very well. Is there any truth in reports that certain clubs, not least one based in Manchester, have approached Eriksson, who has perhaps in turn consulted Grip?

He smiles. "I know exactly what we have said between us, which is that we will carry on, and Sven has no other options, either. It's very simple. No one has talked to Sven about going to other jobs, no one at all. It's just the press."

And with that, we shake hands, and Newman leads me back down to the lobby. "Top bloke, Tord," he says. "Absolutely top bloke." Which is undoubtedly true. But is he also the top coach in world football, as Eriksson likes to assert? The jury is still out, but it will file back in sharpish if, heaven forbid, there is an upset today on the banks of the Rhine.

Tord Grip the life and times

Born: 13 January 1938, Ytterhogdal, Sweden.

1956: Starts playing career at Ytterhogdals in the Swedish Fourth Division while working as a baker. Later plays for AIK Stockholm and the Swedish national team.

1961: Plays for Aston Villa reserves while working in Birmingham for a steel company.

1969: Begins coaching career at Swedish side Karlskoga. Meets Sven Goran Eriksson when the future England coach joins as a full-back.

1976: Appoints Eriksson as his assistant while coach of Degerfors.

1977: Coach of Sweden's Under-16 and women's teams. Assistant with senior side.

1981: Malmo coach and sports director.

1986: Takes charge of Italian Serie B side Campobasso, but lasts just six months.

1987: Spends an unsuccessful year as Norway coach, during which he fails to win a single match and draws four 0-0.

1988-90: Coach of Swiss side Young Boys Berne.

1991: After a break from football because of the illness, then death, of his wife, Siev, returns as assistant Sweden coach, a post he holds until 1997.

1994: Under Tommy Svensson, assistant coach as Sweden reach semi-finals of 1994 World Cup.

1998: Becomes assistant to Eriksson at Lazio, helping the Rome club to the Italian Serie A title in 2000.

2000: Follows Eriksson to England as assistant coach on an estimated £250,000 salary.

2002: Admitted to hospital with a heart scare.

He says: "Sven and I have almost the same education and we are exceptionally good friends. He bounces ideas off me as I am somebody he trusts. I suppose I am a bit of a mentor for him."

They say: "Tord's a very capable instructor and very clever at analysing opponents – the best coach in the world." Sven Goran Eriksson.