The England head coach talked with undercover journalists from the News of the World about becoming manager of Aston Villa on a salary of £5m a year after tax and prising David Beckham away from Real Madrid to join him at Villa Park.
His indiscreet remarks about other members of the England squad will make his next meeting with them, for the World Cup warm- up against Uruguay in March, potentially awkward too. He said of Michael Owen’s transfer to Newcastle United: “I talked to him and said, ‘You are happy?’ He said, ‘Not really with the club, but economically I have never earned that money in my life’.”
Eriksson also appeared to suggest that Wayne Rooney’s problems keeping his temper in check arose from his background. “He’s coming from a poor family, a very rough . . . area,” said Eriksson. The coach also admitted that he dropped Rio Ferdinand earlier this season because “he was not in good shape” and agreed with the reporters’ suggestions that the defender was “too talented for his own good”.
Posing in typical fashion as a rich Arab — which has earned him the Fleet Street monicker “the fake Sheikh” — Mazher Mahmood, the newspaper’s investigations editor, invited Eriksson, along with his agent Athole Still and Richard Des Voeux, one of his lawyers, to Dubai last week under the pretext of discussing coaching at a new football academy in the Gulf state. However, fuelled by fine food and Dom Perignon champagne in the seven-star Burj al-Arab hotel and on a 72ft yacht called Eternity, talk among the group soon turned to the prospect of buying a club and installing Eriksson as coach. When asked for suggestions, the Swede replied: “Aston Villa is for sale.”
Pressed further, Eriksson began to talk about his contractual arrangements at the FA, acknowledging that nothing would happen before the World Cup, but offering some encouragement to his apparent suitors. “Everything is possible, but only at the end of the season,” he said. His contract with England runs until 2008 and he expressed concern that “if I just walk out then (the FA) will ask for money”.
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The journalists quizzed Eriksson about his plans for Villa, who it was intimated he would manage for a three-year contract worth £15m after tax, and were amazed when he suggested he could bring Beckham, his captain with England, to Villa Park. “I know for sure he wants to come back to England,” he said. “If it’s a London club he will come back tomorrow. And it’s up to me to convince him that Birmingham is the right place to be.”
Last night a spokesman for the FA said: “We’ll have to look closely at the content of the report before we make any comment.”