Sven said he was in Nottingham for the challenge, not the money, in one of the more surreal press conferences of modern times
Preamble After years of leering at the latest kiss-and-tell story involving Sven-Göran Eriksson in the News of the World and wondering, ‘How did he pull her?’ now we are we left to wonder the reverse: how have Notts County, who finished in the lower regions of League Two last season, managed to lure Eriksson to become their director of football? And just as we wondered what could possibly have attracted various women to the millionaire manager of England, it’s also legitimate to wonder what could possibly have attracted Eriksson to a club willing to pay him, according to some reports, £40,000 a week.
Sven will be attempting to justify his existence decision in a few moments just as soon as the gentlemen of the press extricate their faces from plates of sausage meat, and you’ll read about every shameless insincerity here. I reckon there are, broadly, four things that will come out of his face:
1) “It’s always been my ambition to join the oldest football club of all.”
2) “Welllllllll…”
3) “I thought it was Juventus.”
4) “I’m a brazen money-grabbing chancer. But, let’s be honest, you’d all do the same if you could away with it.”
That’s the thing with Sven. While his career path over the last few years has been, in a sense, pretty reprehensible, involving little more than collecting pay-off after pay-off, we’d all do the same. And he joins a group of footballing characters who you know it’s not very right-on to approve of, but who you just can’t help finding vaguely amusing: Argentina 1990, Joey Barton and that challenge from Benjamin Massing. If Notts County are stupid enough willing to give Sven a job, why shouldn’t he trouser it?
11.59am Here comes Sven. He looks exactly the same as he did when he took over as England manager in 2000-01. He really doesn’t age, does he?
12pm Some ridiculously officious nugget is enjoying his 15 minutes – “No private interviews I’m afraid. There is a very tight schedule. Very tight schedule. LOOK AT ME. HI MUM.”
12.01am You can read about the nuts and bolts of Sven’s move here. The chairman, Peter Trembling, is doing his thing: “Great coup for Notts County… taking this club to the next stage (this being League One)… this is club founded in 1862… heritage… history… does my ego look big in this… need significant infrastructure on and off the field… this is about the long-term… bringing somebody in who knows the world game… who when we hopefully get into the Premiership has the right contacts.”
12.04pm I wonder where Sven will live. Graduates of Nottingham University will of course know that it’s all about Beeston, an idyllic haven of serenity if ever there was one.
12.05pm Sven has signed a five-year contract. “Five-year contract,” laughs Sean Ingle. “What a pay-off that will be!”
12.06pm Here’s Sven, who starts his first sentence only for his mobile phone to go off. “How much is the fine?” he says to the chairman.
12.07pm “The weather is the same… the press is the same… I wanted to come back to the Premiership, and this is the biggest football challenge of my life. The Premier League is the target. That’s why I’m here: the mone challenge, enormously.”
12.09pm “What is the current record for quickest sacking?” says Sandeep Sajeev. “Has it ever happened in the same presser? This seems the ideal opportunity for an acceptance + resignation speech combo.”
12.10pm Sven is moving to Nottingham! It’s (allegedly) the murder capital of England! But they have a Select-a-disc and a Social, or at least they did in 2000. Sven is rambling in his usual insomnia-curing tone: “we need a training ground… we are at the university”. He said university with real relish, as if he had just realised that such a place offered opportunities away from football to be had there.
12.11pm “One last question” says Nugget to Sky Sports News Man. “How do you attract players to Notts County?” he asks. “My phone is hot,” says Sven, “with people asking how much we can pay for so-and-so.”
12.12pm “Sven’s here for the long term,” says the chairman, with the genuine belief of that bruised wife in The Take insisting that Freddie had changed.
12.13pm The lovely thing for Sven, of course, is that in this country the role of director of football is so ambiguous. The only prerequisite is apparently an interest in playing golf four days a week. Local Newspaper Man asks Sven about his discussions with the manager Ian McParland. “We discussed perlayyyyers… I don’t know the perlayyyyers here at all… I asked Ian what we need… We discussed that yesterday, among other things.”
12.14pm “I only passed Nottingham during all the travels I did some years ago… I am not here for the weather, if the city’s nice, I don’t know that yet… Then I could have gone to Italy… I’m here for the big challenge, and that’s the truth.” Go on Sven, trouser that coin!
12.15pm Sven’s buzzword has been “challenge”, which he has used at least 747 times so far. Of course, he doth protest far too much. Not that he gives one, nor should he.
12.16pm “More lazy stereotypes,” says SHR. “To be fair to you you did say “allegedly” but still. Hope you will correct this…” I did say allegedly, because I have no idea. When I went to Nottingham for a year, I loved the place, and I didn’t get murdered, or even maimed.
12.17pm Sven’s a sly old dog. I reckon somewhere lurking in there is a brilliantly dry comedian. Even now and then you gentle one-liners – when the chairman said about going in one direction, Sven slipped in: ‘Well we can’t go the other way’ – but you get the impression he can’t be bothered with the hassle of thinking up jokes too often. He’s majestically catatonic, a latter-day Jeffrey Lebowski.
12.18pm “GREAT APPOINTMENT,” says Gareth Brown. “I wouldn’t care if we paid him 40K to have his way with [insert name of County player here]‘s stunning wife. We have already more national exposure than in living memory (other than being in administration!).” Fair point. The last thing I remember about Notts County is Tony Agana and Kevin Bartlett wreaking havoc in the top flight in 1991-92. County can’t lose here really: if it works, great; if it doesn’t, well they can obviously afford it.
12.20pm “Does this mark the end of your managerial career?” asks the man from the Daily Mail. “I hope not. I hope not,” says Sven. “This job is of course a little bit new.” The manager, Ian McParland, is asked for his thoughts on being unemployed at Christmas Sven’s appointment. “Blah blah blah… he’s managed England…. I won’t hold that against him,” says McParland in a rich Scottish accent, whereupon, for clarification, someone announces David Brent-style: “He’s Scottish”. That little exchange was an absolute triumph for Britain in the 21st century.
12.22pm “A couple of things,” says Evan McFarlane. “A couple of things – Nottingham isn’t and never has been the murder capital of England. Selectadisc closed down a couple of a months ago (whine) and The Social is a shadow of its former self. There is a Hooters about 750 yards from Meadow Lane though. I should imagine SGE will appreciate the ‘all you can eat wings’ offer on Tuesday nights.”
12.23pm “Honestly,” says Daniel Sheehan, “where does this rank in your time blogging events for the GU Sports desk Rob?” I’m just here for the challenge.
12.24pm Sven is asked his thoughts on being reunited with the English press. “I am ready for it,” he says, looking his inquisitor up and down with a delicious contempt. Then Nugget interjects: “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time. HI DAD.” So that’s that: a thoroughly surreal experience, but good luck to Sven and good luck to Notts County. Thanks for all six of your emails. Bye.
A crack team to take on cops who kill
Inquiries into the 954 deaths in custody since 1990 have all proved fruitless – and then this historic case comes along
Do make sure you’re sitting down. Something quite extraordinary has happened. The police have issued an abject apology for two deaths in their custody, and announced that the officer responsible will be prosecuted. How to put this momentous announcement into context? How to throw it into the sharp relief which is deserves? Well, according to monitoring carried out by the organisation Inquest, there have been 954 deaths in police custody in England and Wales since 1990 – the figure includes shootings – with nary a successful prosecution for murder or manslaughter.
And so to this historic case, which has seen top brass abandon their traditionally minimalist statements on such tragedies, unless of course they take the bizarre decision to pretend that the victim had leapt over a ticket barrier or some such. The deaths have caused “immense sadness”, according to the relevant force’s chief superintendent. “We will certainly take any lessons we can get from this process, and make sure we put them in place so this sort of thing never happens again. We understand the upset that this has caused the public and members of our staff … There is a sense of shock and sadness at the news of the death of two of our police dogs.”
Ah yes. Forgive my getting your hopes up. It’s the case of those two dogs who expired in a car outside Nottingham police headquarters earlier this month, having been left in the vehicle on a searingly hot afternoon. Following an urgent RSPCA investigation, the officer responsible will face animal cruelty charges. The force’s own inquiry apparently continues.
A horrible business, evidently, and we must pass on our condolences to those who knew the animals. Indeed, the police have established a tribute area, where they and members of the public have laid wreaths.
But after we’ve done that, I’m afraid we must contrast Plod’s reaction with, say, that to the death of Ian Tomlinson, who died of abdominal bleeding at the G20 protests in March, shortly after being struck by a Met officer. The police have sweetly judged this to be something worth offering their “sincere regret” about, but refuse to comment further, while the Independent Police Complaints Commission continues one of its famously fast-paced investigations. It would be funny if it weren’t so bleeding wretched.
The contrast has not been lost on some of the families with relatives who have died in police custody. At a recent meeting of their number, a speaker read out the Nottingham chief super’s expressions of anguish. One attendee says the room went quiet as everyone wondered to which death in custody such expressions of frank remorse related. When the dog punchline was revealed, how they didn’t laugh.
There isn’t quite the space to reproduce the official police comments on all those 954 deaths, but let’s challenge any copper who fancies a grim afternoon to delve among them and produce a statement as abjectly apologetic or anguished as the one concerning the two dogs.
Of course, there’s a point to be made about some people’s prioritising of animal injustice, where its human equivalent elicits less concern in them. In 2006, more money was given to a single Devon donkey sanctuary than to all the most prominent charities dealing with violence and abuse of women.
For today, though, these are diversions, because there is something so undeliciously neat about the dog tale that you could be forgiven for thinking it was a staged satire. In an alternate reality, the police would have offered a variation on that cliched explanation for a death in custody – the suspect kicked himself down the nick stairs – perhaps suggesting that the dogs were involved in some sort of asphyxiation game gone tragically wrong.
If the story had failed to catch on, they might have floated a version of the theory that the Met put to Ian Tomlinson’s family in the days after his death – namely, that the officer who struck him could have been a member of the public “dressed in police uniform“.
This idle speculation could go on for ever, or at least until the IPCC completes its inquiries into the G20 cases, which increasingly seems a similar time frame. Nicole Fisher, the protester who was filmed being struck by a police sergeant, told the home affairs committee that the IPCC had informed her that they expected it would take “between 12 and 18 months” to complete their inquiry. Considering it was such a “distressing” and high-profile case of assault, ran the committee’s report, “we cannot imagine why this amount of time is needed”.
An obvious solution suggests itself. A crack team of RSPCA investigators must be seconded to the IPCC to teach the latter how to bring in an investigation in under 18 months. Or would that upset the fine equilibrium of this most credible of public bodies, in whose official logo the “I” is helpfully greyed out? After all, a third of the IPCC’s investigators are former police officers. Given their continuously triumphant record, one can’t help feeling that’s a little like a third of the RSPCA’s investigators being former circus lion tamers.