Eriksson shaken but FA won't stir

England managerial position:   On Beckham: "Beckham and I have a relationship like that (crossed his fingers). We are friends, but a lot of respect."

On how long Beckham will stay at Real Madrid: "This season or next season. But if he already wants to leave then they would sell him

. . . Because this is his third season never winning anything. And he can't see things going to be better. Some of the big stars are getting older and he has had five managers in three and a half years."

On Wayne Rooney: "It is his temper . . . he's come from a poor family. His father was a boxer . . . he could have been a boxer as well."

On Michael Owen at Newcastle: "I talked to Michael Owen and said 'you are happy?' He said 'not really with the club, but economically I never earned that much money in my life'. So they paid the salary more than Real Madrid did. He said 'they gave me a house, they gave me a car, it's incredible'. They had to do it because in any other way he wouldn't have gone there."

On Rio Ferdinand: "He is lazy sometimes."

Sven-Goran Eriksson's dalliance with a fake Arab magnate does raise one grave issue about his immediate future. If the World Cup actually is a battle of wits, how can a person as gullible as this avoid being duped and defeated in Germany this summer? Others have been tricked by the News of the World, but an England manager who celebrated his fifth anniversary in the post last week ought to be the wariest man in the country by now.

While he can reasonably protest that the sums expended on a sting operation with its nerve centre in Dubai's "seven-star" Burj Al-Arab hotel would have been more appropriately directed on, say, tackling an organised crime racket, Eriksson should appreciate that he holds the most sensitive job in football. This tale shows again that all accusations of deviousness are baseless; the Swede has never even tried to be cunning.

There is nothing Machiavellian about a character who trots along to Roman Abramovich's house to hold talks about becoming Chelsea's manager. He is indifferent to the obvious risks he runs. That insouciance made him an easy mark for the con being run in Dubai.

He believed he was travelling there, with the English FA's knowledge, for a spot of luxury consultancy work over a football academy. As the hospitality flowed, however, Eriksson should have kept his wits about him when that innocent enterprise morphed into talk of a takeover at Aston Villa and a tax-free manager's salary of £5 million for him.

His agent, Athole Still, has had to concede the research he carried out must have been inadequate. Still and his client ought to have thirsted for more information about the people proposing to show such munificence. Maybe greed got the better of Eriksson. For all his urbanity, there is a recklessness about the Swede that leaves him and, by extension, the FA at risk.

Many of his comments in Dubai showed he can disperse banalities in private as readily as he does at press conferences. Apparently the club that buys David Beckham can sell a lot of shirts. Keep it to yourself, but the England captain is not too happy about the two trophyless seasons at the Bernabeu. Poor Wayne Rooney will also be aghast to find Eriksson blurting out the secret that his personality reflects the rough area he comes from.

Unfortunately, the FA cannot scoff at the whole business. It was a serious breach of confidence for him to relay Michael Owen's opinion that he is "not really" happy at Newcastle United. This aspect is damaging exactly because it confirms a popular belief. It was assumed that, despite all the passion of the fans, St James' Park must feel like a dip in his career after Anfield and the Bernabeu.

Newcastle have been sensitive about that perception, and now Eriksson's words have struck them hard. Owen is reported to have taken the England manager's disclosure calmly, but the club must be angered to have such embarrassment heaped upon them when there is already quite enough suffering to occupy them.

The whole affair was so utterly unnecessary. It is pure cant to blame Eriksson for disloyalty. There are elements within the FA who will rejoice if he leaves in the summer, taking his salary of some £4 million a year off their wage bill. The manager has enough experience, too, to know his employers would have been saving up to pay him off had the defeat in Northern Ireland led on to failure in the qualifiers.

In practice Eriksson did get England to the finals and the tournament always marks the end of a cycle in football. He and a large majority of the other international managers will be wondering what to do after the competition is over. Several will have lined up their next jobs already. Eriksson's sin is to have hurt his present employers by being so rash and naive.

But the FA need not fear, as has been claimed, that the manager will be too indulgent in Germany to players he might be aiming to sign afterwards for his new club. There is the potential glory of a World Cup to be added to his record, and we know Eriksson can always be trusted to act in his best interests come what may.

Guardian Service