Tord Grip

Tord Erland Grip (born 13 January 1938) is a Swedish former football coach and player. He has worked with several national teams, including England, Sweden, Indonesia, Mexico, the Ivory Coast and Kosovo.

Playing career

Grip began his football career as a teenager playing for Ytterhogdals, where he, like most footballers of his generation also played bandy, later playing part-time in the top flight for Degerfors and AIK while studying for his degree in Physical Education. He played for a reserve side of Aston Villa during a three-month work placement in Birmingham in 1961, although he only appeared in local Intermediate League matches.

Coaching career

Grip became a player/manager at Karlskoga in 1969, and has since managed several other clubs in Sweden, Italy and Switzerland.

He has also managed the Norway national team, the Swedish women's senior team and men's under-16 team, and has had two spells as assistant manager of the Sweden men's team. In 1998, after his second period as assistant manager of the national team, Grip took up a coaching position at the Italian club Lazio as the assistant of fellow Swedish manager Sven-Göran Eriksson.

In January 2001, when Eriksson was appointed England manager, he brought Grip with him from Lazio as assistant manager. Grip remained in the post until the end of the UEFA Euro 2004 and with England until the end of the 2006 FIFA World Cup. In November 2006, he was appointed special adviser to Swedish club Djurgården.

On 6 July 2007, Grip became part of the backroom staff of Manchester City when Sven-Göran Eriksson took over as manager. This reunited Grip with Eriksson after their reign together in the England setup. In June 2008, Grip was again reunited with Eriksson, after accepting an offer to become assistant manager of Mexico.