Cheap and nasty business

FA Affair: As the Faria Alam affair moves from pants-down farce to minor catastrophe, the news that Mark Palios - the English…

FA Affair: As the Faria Alam affair moves from pants-down farce to minor catastrophe, the news that Mark Palios - the English Football Association's former chief executive - tried to sacrifice Sven-Goran Eriksson in order to save his own reputation leaves everyone involved looking cheap, nasty and expendable.

When Palios resigned as chief executive yesterday he said it was important that he took "ultimate responsibility for everything the FA has done in good times and bad".

The FA and Palios, who took over England's ruling body in July last year, had come under increasing pressure after it was revealed that he and England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson had an affair with the same women, FA secretary Faria Alam.

"I have resigned this evening as chief executive of the FA," Palios said in a statement. "I am very sad that I feel this is necessary.

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"It has been a privilege to be chief executive of the FA, but with privilege comes the burden of responsibility. And it has been important for me to take the 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 wrong-doing. But it has been clear to me that my action tonight is essential to enable the Football Association to begin to return to normality."

Executive director David Davies has been put in temporary charge of the FA with immediate effect and the organisation is due to make a formal statement today.

It is a long time since football's oldest governing body, once a model for similar associations around the world, was admired for its clarity of thought and judgment, but now it has outdone even its past displays of incompetence.

This morning it stands accused of bringing itself into disrepute at the most senior levels of its governance and administration.

Palios is not alone. He has Colin Gibson, director of communications, for company. According to yesterday's News of the World, it was on Palios's instructions that Gibson attempted to broker a deal by which information would be divulged on Eriksson's affair with Alam, an FA personal assistant, in exchange for a whitewash of the chief executive's own relationship with the same woman.

Gibson, who has since also offered his resignation, said in an interview with BBC radio yesterday that the FA was aware of the attempts to make a deal with the paper. Thursday's meeting of the 13-strong FA board is certain to conclude that the conduct of Gibson and Palios was unacceptable.

What, however, of the FA board members themselves? Until yesterday, they thought they were meeting to consider Eriksson's future in the light of his alleged affair with Alam.

Several of them spent last week issuing unattributable briefings to journalists claiming that Eriksson would be dismissed this week.

All they needed was the evidence that would help them avoid the need for a severance payment.

His expenses, they said, were being scrutinised to see if he had used his office car in pursuit of the affair, or if he had taken Alam on trips involving official FA business.

In their enthusiasm for getting rid of the £4-million-a-year manager, they made themselves look grubby and perhaps even provided the basis for a libel action - as might those men of mature years who, writing in serious newspapers, accused Eriksson of lying, on the basis of hearsay - and pretty questionable hearsay at that.

And what, too, of Geoff Thompson, the FA's chairman? His willingness to issue a statement clearing Palios of all blame last week added yet another cack-handed touch to this catalogue of blunders.

Palios may reflect that his biggest mistake was not to leap into the arms of Faria or even to get Gibson to do the dirty on Eriksson. It was to have offered Eriksson, at a moment of crisis last spring, an extra million pounds a year to stay in his job.

This was the sort of tough decision Palios had shown himself capable of taking when he refused to take a lenient view of Rio Ferdinand's missed dope test, even though the defender's long suspension cost England dear.

But maybe one show of resolution was enough. This time, the England manager was apparently on the brink of accepting an offer to manage Chelsea. The finals of Euro 2004 were looming, with all the implications for the status and therefore the future revenue of the heavily indebted FA.

Palios could have confronted Eriksson. He could have told him that the contract had been offered on behalf of a nation, and that England expected him to honour its terms. It might have worked, and it might not. But at least it would have had the virtue of making the English FA seem the straight dealers, while revealing Eriksson's true colours.

Palios, however, took the other option, the one that spoke of panic. And now, indirectly, it has come back to ruin him. That extra million quid has come close to ruining Eriksson's stewardship of England, too.

Had the Swede not been so ready to provide the world with this latest prima facie evidence of his greedy nature, he might have been given the benefit of the doubt after his team failed to get beyond the quarter-finals of a major tournament for the second time in a row.

But his acceptance of a bonus rewarding his own lack of loyalty raised the ante on his performance. And what might have been seen as another stage of a perfectly acceptable process of rebuilding was suddenly judged in a harsher light.

For once, Eriksson has provided the most eloquent verdict on the whole affair. In his three-and-a-half years in England, the Swede has not been noted for providing a perceptive commentary on his own progress. Those looking for profound analysis or snappy quotes have been wasting their time.

In recent months, in fact, it began to look as if he was purposefully limiting his command of English - his fourth language, after all - in order to avoid getting involved in meaningful conversations about the progress of his team.

Now, however, he has delivered the only words of sense spoken since the Alam affair broke surface.

"This is nonsense," he said, summing up in a single phrase the entire farrago of cant, hypocrisy, 20/20 hindsight and purblind prejudice which has constituted debate on a subject that appears to have undermined the whole administration of English football.

It was ignited, as so often, by the Murdoch press, which always needs fuel to stoke the circulation fire during the dog days of summer and has certainly come up with a bonfire this time round.

Curiously, there seems to be some sort of gentlemen's agreement, if that is the right term, that no blame should be attached to Alam who, at 38, is no helpless ingenue and will come out of it, with or without Max Clifford's assistance, at least half a million pounds richer.

Observers in other countries are shaking their heads in wonder that England, a nation with the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe, whose town centres are weekend no-go areas for anyone with an aversion to walking through puddles of vomit or watching strangers having sex in public, can get so worked up about such a small, private matter.

When the resignations are over and the FA board have apologised to England's soccer fans for making such a hash of everything, Eriksson should be left alone to get on with preparing his team for the World Cup qualifying campaign, perhaps with a little less in the way of five-star living standards en route.

If the team fail to reach the finals in 2006 or perform badly once there, some way will have to be found of terminating his employment.

Guardian Service