ANOTHER extraordinary 24 hours in the life of the England head coach reached a contradictory conclusion yesterday after Sven-Göran Eriksson was handed his notice by the Football Association and, in the same breath, backed to win the World Cup this summer.
The Swede still has the opportunity to strut gloriously off the English stage, but immortality in Berlin on July 9, and only that, will mask the fact that, ultimately, he was ousted by vexed employers. He admitted as much when he said that he could “understand the FA and the public being fed up with Sven-Göran Eriksson. There has been too much circus around my private life and maybe this is one too many. I can understand the FA and the fans if they want to see a new face.”
Discussions about leaving the job after this summer’s tournament had begun as far back as a year ago, but it took the “fake sheikh” saga to bring both parties to the negotiating table. “I was asked to win the World Cup and then to live my own life,” Eriksson said of Monday’s decisive meeting, which he followed up with a late telephone call to David Beckham, his captain, to inform him of developments.
With Eriksson’s weariness at parts of the job increasingly evident after the News of the World sting, he did not have the energy to fight for every penny of compensation. While he could receive as much as £3.5 million after tax, that will only happen if he is out of work for a whole year after he returns from Germany. “Hopefully it will not cost the FA one penny,” he said, although should his next job pay him less than £3.5 million a year net, the governing body will have to make up the difference.
England supporters will be more concerned about whether the events of the past few days have affected the team’s hopes of success. The contradiction in wanting to see the back of Eriksson while leaving him in charge of “the best team since 1966” — according to Brian Barwick, the FA chief executive — is resolved in one word: pragmatism. The FA did not believe that it could recruit a manager who would enhance England’s chances in Germany. “The players could not care less about this,” Eriksson said, while confirming that triumph in Germany would not lead to a change of heart. “If we win the World Cup, which we can do, then ‘thank you and goodbye’.”
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Clarifying the situation was the right move, but it now requires Eriksson not to embarrass himself or the FA before England’s opening match, against Paraguay on June 10. He will have to talk to the FA Premier League as part of its inquiry into bung allegations, fuelled in part by the Swede, and he will not curtail his enthusiasm for speaking to other clubs. “I’m free,” he said. “If I want to stay in football, I can’t wait until July 10, that’s obvious. But you don’t ring up clubs in football asking for a job. They offer them to you.”
While he seeks a new post, the FA will step up its hunt for his successor. Barwick said that it “would not be appropriate” to consult Eriksson, although the Swede is advising the next man to have “the skin of a rhinoceros”.
He has required that himself throughout the front-page dramas of his five years in charge although, during the recent dark hours, his advisers have taken to reassuring Eriksson with one sentence. “All you’ve got to do is win the World Cup,” they have told him, “and everything else will be forgotten.” If only it was that simple.