“Is there anything Sven Goran-Eriksson won’t do for money?” asked Barry Glendenning, but I suspect the former England/Manchester City manager might draw the line at keeping it in his pants. For everything else, however, up to and including managing North Korea’s national team, Sven’s got his price, as the Guardian’s Matt Scott explains.
Peter Trembling, the Notts County executive chairman, is understood to have been involved in talks with intermediaries representing the Football Association of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Those negotiations were with a view to securing Goran-Eriksson (above, left), the Meadow Lane director of football’s services on loan.
The process is now advanced enough for Trembling and Eriksson to be travelling to Beijing later this week on an eight-day trip. The club chairman is also expected to discuss Chinese business investment opportunities in Qadbak, the British Virgin Islands-registered investment vehicle that owns County.
Although it would be a football fairytale for Eriksson and the players involved, the development would lead to inevitable criticism of Trembling’s willingness to interact with a country where human rights abuses are routine. There will also be questions about what fee Notts County’s owners, Qadbak, might be receiving from a nation that is beset by famine and which has test-fired intercontinental ballistic missiles and a nuclear bomb.