Soderberg & Lagerback - great combination.

By Reece Killworth, Sportinglife.com

The concept of joint-coaches has never caught on in England.

There have been a few isolated cases - probably the most famous being Roy Evans and Gerard Houllier at Liverpool - but it is still far from being the norm.

In Sweden, though, their national side is led by two men - Tommy Soderberg and Lars Lagerback.

And, after a shaky start to their partnership the duo have certainly proved to be a success.

Lagerback was the first to be involved in the national side back in 1990 but it was Soderberg who replaced Tommy Svensson as national coach in 1998 after working with the Swedish Under-21 team.

One of his first appointments was to make Lagerback his assistant coach and he made such an impression that he was eventually promoted to joint-national coach.

Lagerback is a similar sort of character to his countryman Sven-Goran Eriksson, taking an analytical approach to everything.

Soderberg is more outgoing and is more media-friendly as he is happy to provide the quote the press are looking for while Lagerback keeps himself to himself.

Their partnership recovered from a poor start at Euro 2000 and Sweden qualified for the World Cup without losing a game.

They have become a popular partnership in Sweden and are now eager to impose themselves on the world stage.

As Soderberg says: "We feel we're just getting better and better, because we have time to do more things.

"Four eyes are better than two."