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The little-known role Sven-Goran Eriksson played in bringing massive Rangers hero to Ibrox
Eriksson had forged a close friendship with then Gers bosses Walter Smith and Archie Knox in the mid 1990s.
SVEN-GORAN ERIKSSON will be laid to rest on Friday in his Swedish homeland with many of football’s greats in attendance.
The former England manager passed away last month at the age of 76 after a brave battle with cancer.
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And SunSport can now reveal the key role Eriksson played in helping Rangers land one of the most prolific strikers of the modern era - Marco Negri.
Eriksson had forged a close friendship with then Gers bosses Walter Smith and Archie Knox in the mid 1990s.
He brought his star-studded Sampdoria team to Glasgow in the summer of 1995 for the Ibrox International Tournament.
It included Roberto Mancini, Clarence Seedorf and Enrico Chiesa, dad on new Liverpool winger Federico.
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They lost 2-0 to Gers with Eriksson describing Brian Laudrup and new signing Paul Gascoigne as playing “fantasy football”.
Less than two years later, Knox travelled to Genoa to study Eriksson’s training methods with the Serie A giants.
It was a two-pronged trip, with the Gers No2 also on a spying mission as they targeted top Italian striker Filippo Maniero.
But Eriksson told Knox he was after the wrong man - and demanded he go for Perugia frontman Negri instead.
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Smith and Knox were so impressed by the quality on offer that they sparked an Italian invasion that year.
Lorenzo Amoruso, Sergio Porrini, Rino Gattuso and teenage full-back Luigi Riccio all arrived at Ibrox, along with Negri.
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Negri hit 23 goals in his opening 10 league games and 33 in all in the first half of the 1997/98 campaign before suffering a freak eye injury while playing squash with teammate Porrini, one which would blight the rest of his Gers career.
But Knox remembers the role played by the highly-respected Eriksson in landing Negri his dream move to Scotland 27 years ago.
He recalled: “I’d gone over to Italy to watch a striker called Filippo Manieri, who was scoring goals for Verona in Serie A at the time.
“I knew Sven and I went to watch his Sampdoria team train while I was in Italy. I went to Parma, too.
“I stood and watched Lilian Thuram train on his own at Parma after the rest of his team-mates had gone home.
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“All they did was feed him balls and he’d find a target with a pass. Time and again he’d practice it on his own.
“Two years later, he’d win the World Cup with France and score both goals in the semi-final win over Croatia.
“I always told young boys coming through about the dedication of Thuram and what it took to become a professional at the top level.
“Sven understood it all and had a great set up at Sampdoria.
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"He knew I was over to watch Maniero – but he had another target for me.
“He told me to go to Perugia because they had an out-and-out goalscorer there called Marco Negri. That was that.
“It wasn’t always great with Marco, even in those opening weeks when he seemed to score every time the ball went to him.
“At half-time in a game at Ibrox, I asked him to start running the channels and making himself available to take passes from the full-backs.
“He replied: ‘Archie, have you watched me play before?’
"I said ‘Of course, I have’. He said ‘Well, you know I don’t do that’. And that was that!
“It was very sad to hear about Sven’s passing. He was a great man and a great coach.
"I’ll always remember his advice about Marco.”
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Negri emerged as a cult hero among Gers fans after his dynamic start to life at Ibrox.
Earlier this week, SunSport revealed he had been spotted wearing his old Gers shirt during a fans’ convention in Tenerife.
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And Maniero, who had briefly played under Eriksson at Sampdoria, eventually did get his move to Rangers.
Alex McLeish signed him on transfer deadline day on 2005 after he had left Torino, although he never made a first-team appearance for Gers.
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