It was before Spain became great actually, back when they were perennial under-achievers.
Eriksson was in charge for 3 tournaments:
- World Cup 2002: Qualified by a whisker thanks to that Beckham free kick against Greece and then looked good in the finals, losing to eventual winners Brazil in the Quarter-final thanks to David Seaman's mistake.
- Euro 2004: Wayne Rooney's emergence gave them a great chance. They bottled it against France, having been leading after 90 minutes only to end up losing. They then looked great for a couple of games, only to completely bottle it against hosts Portugal when Rooney was injured. This was when Ronaldo was still pretty shit and they managed to lose the final to Greece!
- World Cup 2006: A very strong England team won their group after squeaking past the footballing giants of Trinidad & Tobago and Paraguay, did the same against Ecuador, then bottled it against Portugal for the second tournament in a row.
At least Southgate's teams have generally smashed the teams they should smash in tournaments. He took over after the Allardyce disaster and had a team nobody considered would do much in the finals. He lead them to the semi-finals before narrowly losing to Croatia, then had them as runners-up in the Euros and lost to the eventual runners up France in Qatar. Judging him against all other England managers since Alf Ramsey, only twice have they even reached a semi-final (out of 23 attempts). If he's 'bottled' a couple of tournaments, all but two of England's many other managers haven't done well enough to get to the the bottling stage.
No way for us to know how another manager would have done in his place of course. I don't think they'll win the Euro's this summer, but I would confidently predict their next manager will do worse than Southgate has.