England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson will face his bosses at the Football Association (FA) on Tuesday to answer questions over a sex scandal that has stunned English soccer.
The Swede flew back to London on Monday amid calls that he should follow FA chief executive Mark Palios and resign. Senior FA officials met at their headquarters in central London but there was no sign of Eriksson, who is now due to meet them on Tuesday.
English soccer’s governing body has admitted both men had an affair with an FA secretary.
While that may not be grounds for firing Eriksson, the Swede is to be questioned by the FA board about how the organisation came to issue an initial statement denying it.
If he is found to have misled the FA, which was later forced to admit there had been an affair, he is expected to be fired maybe as soon as Thursday.
After 12 hours of discussions on Monday, the FA issued a statement effectively saying it had nothing yet to say.
”Due to the ongoing enquiry that was announced last week the FA is unable to provide any conclusive comment at this moment,” the statement said.
”We fully understand the huge interest and demand for an FA statement and will of course issue any definitive update as soon as we are in a position to do so.”
Palios, who had been in the job for only a year, quit on Sunday after more newspaper revelations about the scandal, which involves a 38-year-old FA secretary, Faria Alam.
David Davies, the FA’s executive director who has been put temporarily in charge after Palios’s departure, said on Monday that England’s national federation does not want to lose Eriksson too.
”Let’s make this absolutely clear, Sven-Goran Eriksson is one of the outstanding football coaches in the world,” Davies told reporters outside the FA’s headquarters in central London.
”That’s why so many people want to hire him. That’s why, when they seek his services, we have to say that. That’s why we also have to say he wants to be the coach of the senior England team.
”He has a track record, a consistent record of success wherever he’s worked and of course he’s highly respected by the players.”
Davies said that the FA staff will try to get on with their jobs as usual despite the internal turmoil. Reporters, photographers and television camera crews camped outside the FA’s central London headquarters in Soho Square and chairperson Geoff Thompson and other leading officials and board members had to fight their way in.
They declined to make any comment on the latest crisis to hit the FA.
”When the staff comes in, we will be saying to people, let’s get on with the important business that we all have in front of us, and we will get on with that,” Davies said.
”We have had problems in the past, everybody knows that. Our business is carried out in the intense glare of publicity.
”You’re all here. In one sense I’m thrilled you’re all here because of the interest in the game. People care for the game passionately. We have a responsibility to sort out these problems, to come through this period and to get on with the new season.”
Meanwhile, Eriksson flew home from watching a soccer tournament in Amsterdam and went straight to his home in central London.
Palios announced his resignation a week before the start of the new season in a statement released by the FA on Sunday.
”It has been a privilege to be chief executive of the FA but with privilege comes the burden of responsibility,” Palios said.
”And it has been important for me to take ultimate responsibility for everything the FA has done in good times and bad. Personally, I do not accept that I have been guilty of any wrongdoing.”
The FA has scheduled a special board meeting for Thursday to discuss an inquiry into how two office romances among unmarried people turned into a public-relations nightmare.
Eriksson will also be specifically asked if he gave misleading information over his relationship with Alam. Last Thursday, Eriksson issued a statement saying he had ”at no time either categorically confirmed or denied any relationship with Ms Faria Alam”.
On Sunday, the News of the World printed a transcript of a conversation it said it had with the FA’s director of communications, Colin Gibson, last Saturday in which he allegedly offered the newspaper details of Alam’s relationship with Eriksson, as long as Palios wasn’t mentioned.
Gibson was alleged to have told the newspaper: ”What I’m proposing is that I give you chapter and verse on her [Alam] and Sven … and the payoff, obviously, is that we leave MP [Palios] out of it.”
Gibson has also tendered his resignation. — Sapa-AP