Coach did want to stay to 2008

My answer to Dein’s question, incidentally, was Arsene Wenger, who would have had the job before Eriksson but for the Arsenal vice-chairman’s effective blocking of his candidacy. Wenger would be an excellent choice this time, a sophisticate whose team, on their day, play the best football to be seen anywhere in the Premiership, and it will be interesting to see if Dein is any more accommodating now, even if Wenger professes a lack of interest in the job.

First things first: fans everywhere are entitled to ask how it has come to this -the best-paid coach in the game going two years before the end of a lucrative contract he pledged to honour in full less than three months ago. Over lunch on November 4, he said: “I have a contract until 2008 and I have never had any discussions at the FA about it. I have never thought about finishing after the World Cup. Honestly, I have not.”

His employers would now have us believe that there had long been tacit agreement between both parties that Eriksson’s “natural span” would expire in July, but on Friday the lie was given to this mutually convenient account of recent events when the coach confirmed that his embarrassing flirtation with the News of the World’s “fake sheikh” had indeed precipitated his early departure. Speaking in Montreux at the draw for Euro 2008, he said it had been his intention to see out his contract.

What had changed things? “My trip to Dubai,” he muttered, ruefully.

It is now apparent that he had not jumped, but been pushed, and when I pressed him on the subject he would add only: “I am not the man to answer that.”

The obvious conclusion is that the FA decided that enough was enough after the Swede’s well-documented indiscretions and that he had to go as soon as it was practical, without jeopardising England’s World Cup prospects. Nobody will spell it out, but Eriksson was effectively sacked, with six months’ notice.

The search for his successor has already started, and the new coach will be appointed well before the World Cup, but will be allowed no part in it. There is one possible exception, according to Brian Barwick, the FA’s chief executive. If Steve McClaren is given the job (which is increasingly unlikely) he would perform the same role at the finals as he does now, as Eriksson’s assistant.

Nobody new would be allowed into the “inner sanctum” in Germany, Barwick said. Just as Terry Venables barred his heir apparent, Glenn Hoddle, from any involvement at Euro 96, Eriksson insisted: “This is still my team and only my team.” He wants no interference, and the FA agrees that it would be confusing for the players to have two bosses around.

England will take a squad of 23 players to Germany. Fitness permitting, Eriksson said he could name “18 or 19 of them now”, adding that the figure would be as many as 21 or 22 but for the lack of games three of his back-up reserves had been getting at Chelsea. Glenn Johnson, Wayne Bridge and Shaun Wright-Phillips all needed to play more often if they were to go to the finals. “For three years now I have been hoping Johnson would be our new Gary Neville, but he isn’t because he has not been getting the games. It’s the same with Wright-Phillips, who is not playing often enough for Chelsea.”

Soon enough, that will be a problem for his successor. Eriksson has learnt enough about the wiles of the English media to realise that any attempt to withhold the identity of his replacement until after the World Cup would be futile -however much it might suit him. “It will have to be decided by March or April, and then it will come out,” he said. “To keep it secret is impossible.”

Already there are clues. Guus Hiddink, the early favourite, was in London last Wednesday for what a mutual friend in Holland described as a secret meeting, with whom it is as yet unclear. But the peripatetic Dutchman’s CV could scarcely be more impressive. Coach to PSV Eindhoven, with whom he won the European Cup, and to the Australian national team, he has had top jobs in Turkey (Fenerbahce) and Spain (Valencia, Real Madrid and Real Betis), and has taken Holland (1998) and South Korea (2002) to the semi-finals of the World Cup. The Koreans made him an honorary citizen, and Australia are tempted to follow suit, having won a playoff with Uruguay to qualify for the biggest tournament of them all for the first time since 1974. With South Korea and again with Australia he has proved that he can get the best out of the resources available, however limited, and as a Dutchman he knows his football and plays it the way it was meant to be played. At 59 he has let it be known that he is ready for a change, and his agent, Cees van Nieuwenhuizen, said: “He would be willing to come to England.”

Hiddink ticks more boxes than any of the British contenders, foremost among whom is Martin O’Neill, who has his supporters at Soho Square, and would love the job if personal circumstances were to allow. His wife’s serious illness was behind his decision to quit Celtic last season. Since then he has devoted his full attention to looking after her.

With her condition slightly improved, the hope is that O’Neill will be able to return to work sometime soon. One senior FA source told me: “It may be that international management would suit Martin better than a club job. It is less time consuming, and would allow him to be with his wife more often.”

If his appointment were possible, O’Neill would bring to the England dressing room all the motivational qualities that Eriksson is said to lack, but he is much more than an Irish firebrand. He is also a deep thinker and possesses a powerful football intellect, which took Leicester City into Europe and Celtic to the Uefa Cup final. Barwick is believed to be in his corner.

Unfortunately for the Little Englanders, there are question marks against all their hopefuls. Alan Curbishley has done an excellent job at Charlton, but has no European experience and the nearest he gets to working with top players is Danny Murphy and Darren Bent. The prevailing view is that he needs a bigger club as a final stepping stone. Sam Allardyce has vociferous advocates, but England fans would surely balk at the rough and tumble football his Bolton team play, McClaren’s star is waning as Middlesbrough sink towards the relegation places and Stuart Pearce admits he is not ready. Itwould be good to see him apprenticed to Venables, in much the same way that the Republic of Ireland are using Sir Bobby Robson to bring on Steve Staunton, but Dagenham’s favourite son is deemed to come with “too much baggage” for the idea to be considered seriously by the men who matter. Noel White, the chairman of the international committee, said “over my dead body” the last time Venables was linked with England, and the old boy’s attitude will not have changed.

All of which brings us back to square one, and the conversation with Dein. Who would I have? Wenger, I told him, knowing that he would again fight tooth and nail to prevent it. Nor would the intrinsically conservative FA go for an even stronger personal preference, which would be to dump Eriksson, now a lame duck as well as a tactical flat-earther, and hire Jose Mourinho just for the World Cup.

The self-styled “Special One” is a resourceful tactician and a proven winner, and England’s chance of living their dream would improve to the nth degree if he were drawing up plans A and B and making the substitutions. John Terry, Frank Lampard and Joe Cole, to name but three, would love it.

The one candidate, real or perceived, not mentioned yet is Portugal’s Luiz Felipe Scolari. “Big Phil” has obvious merits, most notably the fact that he has won the World Cup with his native Brazil, but he speaks no English.

Eriksson was interesting on this subject. He said: “When I worked in Portugal for the first time, in 1982, I couldn’t speak any Latin language and that was a massive handicap. I had to work with an interpreter, and the one I had was excellent with languages but didn’t know anything about football. I doubt if he knew whether the ball was square or round. Speaking to him in Swedish, I’d use football terms he had never heard before and so the translation became very strange. I could see the players looking puzzled by the translation. It’s a terrible handicap if you don’t speak the language of the country you’re working in, not just in the job but in your daily life. When I was out for dinner, I sat there feeling like a newborn child. I learnt from that, and before I went to Italy I studied Italian. I knew I was going six months beforehand, so I prepared.”

The language barrier is not the only reason England should think twice before recruiting abroad again. A coach coming straight from another country (as opposed to Mourinho and Wenger, who already work here) would have no experience of the uniquely intrusive depredations of the English tabloid media, and could tumble into the same pratfalls as poor old Sven. In no other country, certainly none in Europe, is so much invasive interest taken in the private lives of football folk.

Hiddink, who is not married, could be vulnerable.

Eriksson also had a take on that. “The English people are very kind, but the English press are very strange. Ask the previous England managers what they had to deal with. All of them before me were given hard times as well, and often not for football reasons. Even if you are warned what to expect, as I was, you don’t really think about that, all you think about is the football, the players, the games, whether you will be successful. To do this job you have to have skin that is hard, like a turtle, because if you care about everything that is written about you, you will never feel very well.”

If the FA were to appoint another foreigner, what would be his advice? “I’d say, ‘If you’re not going to the office, or to a football match, stay at home, lock the door and don’t go out. That way you can’t get into trouble’.”

Lurid reporting of his sexual liaisons has not bothered him, but he was hurt by the News of the World and its sting in Dubai, and, going against FAadvice, he is taking legal action against the newspaper. “Unfortunately I can’t talk about it, but sooner or later the truth will come out,” he said. “Of course I got angry and I’ve called in lawyers, hopefully the best, to take action. It might cost me a lot of money, but I don’t care about that. Meanwhile, life goes on.”

The incident has not soured him towards England, or the job, which he still considers the best in world football. “I don’t regret coming here at all,” he said. “It has been fantastic, and I can’t imagine anybody who is offered the chance to succeed me saying no; you would regret it for the rest of your life.

“I’ll tell you a story that will show you how attractive it is. When Arrigo Sacchi resigned at AC Milan, he said at a press conference, ‘No more football for me, that’s enough. I will not be a manager again’. A journalist asked him, ‘What, never, whatever job they offer you?’ and he replied, ‘Maybe just one. England manager, I would do that. Only that’.”

Now there is a name for Dein to conjure with.