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WAGs on tour don't affect players' performances: Sven Goran Eriksson

By Super Admin

London, Oct. 6 (ANI): Former England boss Sven Goran Eriksson has blasted players who have blamed the presence of WAGs for their team's World Cup failure in 2005.

"That is a stupid excuse. Their presence had absolutely nothing to do with the football," The Sun quoted Eriksson, as saying.

Recently, Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard had said that the England team became distracted by the presence of their wives and girlfriends in Baden-Baden four years ago.

Current England boss Fabio Capello has already made it clear that the WAGs will not be welcome in South Africa next year.

However, they will stay on the island of Mauritius and only fly in to spend a few hours with their partners the day after England's World Cup matches.

On this, Eriksson said: "Does that make Capello tougher than me, inviting the wives or not? When I was the manager I invited them when I thought it was the right occasion to do it, and that was not very often.

"England in the past were not different to any other country in the world. The Swedes did the same as we did, the Germans, everyone. It shouldn't have made an impact on the players."

Eriksson believes that England's departure from the Championship was more down to mental weakness.

"That is my only regret. The one thing I would have changed would be to prepare the team mentally better for penalty shootouts. Whether that would have helped I'll never know - but mental strength is very important if you are going to win a World Cup," he said.

Eriksson, who thinks that biggest danger to England is the expectation, said that the current team has it all what it takes to win a world cup.

"The closer they get to the World Cup, the bigger the favourites they will become. It puts a lot of pressure on the players, all the time to be expected to reach the final. And those expectations will be even bigger this time because of the way England have qualified.

"They have been absolutely brilliant, winning every game in style. If you look at the current squad, all of the big players have already been to one, two or even three World Cup," he added. (ANI)

Story first published: Thursday, August 24, 2017, 16:49 [IST]
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