The sex scandal that has been plaguing Sven Goran Eriksson and his employer has exposed the glaring weaknesses of the FA, writes Paul Kelso
Were Sven Goran Eriksson to step back for a moment from the lies, hysteria, hypocrisy and occasional outbreaks of football that have marked his three years as England coach, he might reflect that his treatment constitutes an object lesson both in the conduct of public life in Britain and the growing pains of its most venerable institutions
To the dismay of his growing army of detractors, the Swede is likely to survive the turmoil engulfing the Football Association.
However, the attempt to unseat him has followed a template familiar
to politicians and celebrities whose private lives have been illuminated
by the pious, intrusive glare of the press.
The fallout from Faria Alam's affairs with Eriksson and Mark
Palios, the chief executive who resigned on Sunday protesting his
innocence after attempting to sling Sven to the wolves, has also
illustrated the difficulties that sporting institutions founded in the
amateur age face in adjusting to an era in which commercialism as well
as libidos run rampant.
Eriksson has his flaws but naivety is not among them.
When he accepted his post, he knew he would be the subject of
considerable media interest.
It was nothing new, he reasoned, for someone who had held a high-profile coaching role at Roman club Lazio. In Italy, hard though it may be to believe at a time when BBC reporters use the phrase "Svengate" without blushing, the football press is even more voracious than in Britain.
But Rome proved no preparation for what Eriksson has faced since he first blinked inscrutably into the lights of the cameras. As the holder
of a post that requires its occupant, every two years, to meet the inflated expectations of a football public not so much starved of success as famished or face opprobrium, he was prepared for criticism. What he was not ready for, he has since confessed, was the interest in his private life.
But he can be in no doubt now that it’s in the bedroom, not the boardroom, that the Brits do for their public figures.
Eriksson steadfastly refused to comment when news of his dalliance with Ulrika Jonsson emerged, and – crucially – neither did his employers.
Britain’s two favourite Swedes may have made entertaining copy, but without a public-interest justification to the story there was no need for the FA, or anyone else, to comment. This time round, the FA’s disastrous decision to erroneously deny reports of the affair with Alam made the subject a matter of legitimate inquiry, and Eriksson’s conduct the heart of the matter.
Until Palios's hopeless attempt at self-preservation, what Sven said to whom was the central issue. For a while, it seemed that he would pay,
not for having an affair, but for trying to cover it up. Deliciously, it
is Palios who has paid the price for deception, leaving the sphinx-like
Eriksson to stride serenely on.
For the institution Palios leaves behind, the failings exposed will need more than a new chief executive. The nub of the FA’s problem, mirrored at the England and Wales Cricket Board, is a failure adequately to adjust a structure developed in the Corinthian age to cope with the demands of an era that has seen a vast injection of cash into the top end of the game.
At the FA’s heart is the 92-member council made up of representatives of the amateur game, including county associations, Oxford and Cambridge universities, and the armed forces.
For most of the past century, this unwieldy coalition of the "blazerati"
was just about able to cope with the FA's numerous responsibilities, which run from the England team to the recreational game.
But dramatic changes in the 1990s – mainly the foundation of the
Premiership and the injection of Rupert Murdoch's billions – left the
organisation looking hopelessly outdated. In 1999, an executive board was established to make more nimble decisions, but its composition – six representatives of the professional game and six from the shires – institutionalised the conflict of interest that is at the heart of the FA's problems.
These men – it is always men – will decide Eriksson's fate today, but
they appear too riven by conflict and consumed by self-interest to be able to decide their own.
The creation of the Premiership ensured the elite would grow richer
and more powerful, regardless of the FA, and by granting the professional game an equal voice on the board the governing body effectively in effect ceded control.
Compared with their county cousins, the professional chairmen
and chief executives are pin-sharp, but their interests are not those of
the game at large.
The dysfunction on display this week demands root-and-branch
reform. But achieving this level of reform is a task that will make even
Eriksson's love life look straightforward.
-(Guardian Service)
• Paul Kelso is the Guardian's sports correspondent