Joe Lovejoy - Sven-Goran Eriksson

The crisis was provoked not so much by the affair as by Eriksson’s ambivalent reply when questioned about it by Davies – that and the fact that Palios had also been involved with Ms Alam. Eriksson told Davies in a telephone conversation deemed by the coach to be personal and private that it was all ‘nonsense’. He was therefore both surprised and incensed when this brief chat with a friend led to a formal, public denial by the FA, which subsequently had to be retracted, causing great embarrassment to all concerned. The key word ‘nonsense’ had referred to the fact that Eriksson’s love life was under scrutiny again; it was not a ‘categorical denial’ that the relationship had taken place.

It was when Palios was implicated as another of Ms Alam’s lovers that an awkward situation became a full-blown scandal. The FA’s chief executive had been a man on a mission, the mission being ‘to clean up the game’, and News of the World exposés of his own behaviour would not do at all. Through his head of communications, Colin Gibson, he offered the paper a deal. They would be given full details of Eriksson’s affair, the quid pro quo being that they left Palios’ name out of the story. For a few days Palios and Gibson thought they had pulled it off, but then the News of the World decided that the attempted cover-up was the best story of all, and printed a transcript of their taped telephone conversations with Gibson, during which he said: ‘What I’m proposing is that I give you chapter and verse on her and Sven. And that the pay-off, obviously, is that we leave MP [Palios] out of it. I’ve got the details, I’ve got the places, I’ve got the phone calls. I’ve got everything.’

When news of their machinations came out, Palios and Gibson were both forced to resign, and for a time it seemed that Eriksson would have to follow suit. The chairman of the FA, Geoff Thompson, instigated an investigation into the ‘coach’s conduct, hiring an independent lawyer to interview all those involved and prepare a report to be considered by an emergency meeting of the FA’s twelve-man board. The feeling was that Eriksson could be sacked, without the £10 million or so compensation entailed in paying up his contract, if he was found to have committed ‘gross misconduct’ by misleading his bosses when he told Davies the original News of the World story was ‘nonsense’.

There was a great deal of off-the-record briefing and ‘spinning’ against Eriksson by members of the board, reflected in an article in the Daily Express on 31 July, when Harry Harris wrote: ‘Sven-Goran Eriksson will be sacked next week. The FA board is split 11–1, overwhelmingly in favour of ending his reign as England coach.’ Steve McClaren, of Middlesbrough, was to take over.

Two days later, on returning from holiday in Spain, Davies misjudged his employer’s mood, and gave Eriksson a handsome testimonial which effectively put him, too, on trial. The executive director said: ‘Sven is very popular and respected by the players. He has a consistent track record everywhere he has worked. He is one of the outstanding coaches in the world, that is why many clubs seek his services.’ The board were furious. Unwittingly, Davies had guaranteed his friend a handsome pay-off in the event of his dismissal. One board member, wearing a cloak of anonymity, thundered: ‘Davies had no business making those statements. It was taken as a vote of confidence in Eriksson when Davies is in no position to do it. It is for the board to decide whether Eriksson goes or not. Davies should have been told to keep his mouth shut.’

It was against this bloodthirsty background that the board met on 5 August. By this stage, the FA were so paranoid about leaks and adverse publicity that they booked three suites at different hotels and didn’t tell members where they were going until they were on their way. The real venue was the Leonard Hotel in Marylebone, where there was one absentee, Mike Rawding, from the East Riding FA, who was in hospital.

Blood on the walls? Hardly. After so much hype and hullabaloo, the meeting was the soggiest of damp squibs. The independent lawyer, Peter Norbury, had found no evidence that Eriksson had deliberately misled the FA over his affair with Ms Alam, concluding that the key conversation between Davies and the coach has been a personal one, and was therefore inadmissible. The meeting therefore broke up without a vote being taken on Eriksson’s position, and it was announced that he had ‘no case to answer’. There was criticism of Davies, for failing to phrase his question more precisely, and on a formal basis, and also for his fulsome praise of the subject of the inquiry in advance of its outcome, but a slap on the wrist and a reminder to restrict his comments to his area of jurisdiction was deemed sufficient action.

What did Eriksson make of it all? He laughed dismissively over dinner with his assistant, Tord Grip, but would have been far from amused had he heard what was said before the meeting, when there was broad support for one of his most trenchant critics who declaimed: ‘It’s time we were looking for a new coach as well as a chief executive. We need honourable, straightforward leadership.’

On a strictly non-attributable basis, senior football correspondents were told that Eriksson would be on trial in England’s first two World Cup qualifying games, away to Austria and Poland in September. Failure to win either of these would provide an excuse to sack him for footballing reasons. Ms Alam, who had been privy to the FA’s thought processes from ‘pillow talk’ when Palios was her lover, said they thought Eriksson was ‘more trouble than he was worth’. They believed his ‘sexual shenanigans detracted from his job’. Her advice was to get out before they got him.

Predictably, the England team leapt to the support of their beleaguered coach, but history tells us that players are motivated mostly by self-interest, and always rush to speak up for the man who picks them. They backed Bobby Robson, Terry Venables and, to a lesser extent, Kevin Keegan until they left, when it quickly became a case of: ‘The king is dead, long live the king.’ Claudio Ranieri, at Chelsea, was another good example.

The reserves, who rarely get a game, even when Beckham and company are playing poorly, are nowhere near as supportive, and one former England captain, who played throughout Euro 2004, told me, on the understanding that he was not identified: ‘We could qualify for tournaments with my dad as manager. Sven is paid all that money to win the big games – Brazil, France and Portugal – not the qualifiers, and the fact is we haven’t done that.’

Elsewhere in this book there is glowing testimony to Eriksson’s ability and success at club level. Unfortunately for England, in two major tournaments he has failed to live up to his reputation in the very different world of international management, and he seems unlikely to have another chance. The mystique that served him well in the early stages of his management has been stripped away by the passage of time and, in the places that matter, increasing familiarity was bringing with it something dangerously close to contempt.

The epithet the Italian media accorded Sven-Goran Eriksson during the 13 years he plied his trade in their country sprang to mind after England’s second successive elimination from a major tournament at the quarter-final stage. When the Football Association recruited him in November 2000, at unprecedented expense, they expected sustained progress. Getting no further than the last eight of a European Championship won by Greece was definitely not what had been envisaged.