Paul Hayward: It took a trial for us to see what football so often lacks: transparency
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Fabio Capello resigns
An FA statement read: "The Football Association can confirm that Fabio Capello has today resigned as England manager."The statement went on: "This follows a meeting involving FA chairman David Bernstein, FA general secretary Alex Horne and Fabio Capello at Wembley Stadium."
This was a trial for our times in which all the modern demons showed up at Southwark Crown Court: the bonus culture, offshore dealings, football managers taking cuts from transfers, police raids snapped by tipped-off 'Sun' photographers and the 'News of the World' speaking from beyond its grave.
It brought us Monaco accounts named after dogs, an admission of near-illiteracy by the Tottenham Hotspur manager, a road movie in which Harry Redknapp and Milan Mandaric buddied-up on drives to the outposts of English football's second tier and courtroom clashes that drew the "holy Bible" and staring cops into the drama. Not forgetting, of course, the severance talks between Mr Redknapp and Portsmouth in the Bournemouth Little Chef.
Like Mr Redknapp's managerial career, his trial on charges of tax evasion was vivid theatre, but with deeply serious sub-plots. The first was always whether the highest-placed club manager in the English game would be at liberty to take over from Fabio Capello after Euro 2012. His acquittal -- and the resignation of Mr Capello last night -- answer that.
Some awkward truths about the beautiful game showed themselves during the trial.
We now have open proof that some football managers are taking a cut of net profits from the sale of players. Mr Redknapp earned 5pc of the gain from Peter Crouch's move from Portsmouth to Aston Villa and £300,000 (€360,000) out of Rio Ferdinand's transfer from West Ham to Leeds.
There was nothing illegal in those arrangements. But they are objectionable and should be banned. Mr Redknapp's argument in court was that a manager who had improved a player and therefore made a profit for his club should be entitled to some fruit from the crop -- a ruinous idea that throws up a direct conflict of interest and would tempt a saint.
The £300,000 (€360,000) West Ham lost from Mr Ferdinand's move might have paid for the education and coaching of five little Rios. Ultimately it is money leaking from the club and opens up the possibility that managers will buy players purely to move them on for personal gain. This is the crime of conveyor-belt trading that agents are so often accused of by managers.
In court, Mr Redknapp portrayed this iniquitous system as a fair part of managerial life, forgetting that across the Thames, the City of London is under moral assault for its bonus culture. Equally Portsmouth, where Mr Mandaric's friend and employee took a cut, have been through torture and are now expiring under a winding-up petition. Not Mr Redknapp's fault, of course, but the culture that treats football clubs as personal-enrichment vehicles is rampant.
The feeling was that the jury was peering in on an arcane world in which Mr Redknapp thrived on his instincts, humour and charm.
Frankly, much of it read like the script for the kind of film art-school directors make about chirpy cockneys. The movie would start with the police making a boisterous entry to Mr Redknapp's luxury home while a 'Sun' lensman snaps away. How did the paper know 'chez Redknapp' would be raided? Again the trial led us into a dark realm where the media acquire material which allow them to confront the accused of supposedly confidential evidence.
The detective inspector accused of "staring" by Mr Redknapp ("I know you're trying to give me a problem," the defendant said, in one heated exchange), called paper's knowledge of the raid "disappointing". It was more than that.
Yet the 'News of the World' was not on trial, however much John Kelsey-Fry QC, Mr Redknapp's defence counsel, tried to direct attention away from the apparent contradiction between his client's evidence in a newspaper interview ("it was a bonus for selling Crouch", Mr Redknapp said in print) and his insistence in court that the account named Rosie 47 merely contained an investment fund set up in Monaco by Mr Mandaric, without a trace of tax evasion.
Mr Redknapp's admission that he "lied" to the 'News of the World' to get it "off the phone" undermined his repeated protestations of honesty and felt like a pivotal moment. It also showed how his mind works. Mr Redknapp is highly anecdotal, fluid in his recollection of events and inclined to reduce the serious to the knockabout.
The best example: when the prosecution asked why he signed a form authorising the transfer of US$100,000 (€75,000) to an account in Florida, Mr Redknapp said he was "thinking about marking David Beckham at the time". Portsmouth were playing Manchester United the next day. At no stage did he treat the allegations against him as anything other than preposterous and mystifying.
He was also willing to embarrass himself in the witness box, saying he could hardly write a team-sheet, had never sent an email and was a financial ingenue who barely knew how much was in his bank accounts or who owed him what.
In these exchanges, you could feel the old ghosts of class and snobbery show up. Across the country Mr Redknapp was widely mocked for these confessions. He was back to being the cartoon character he has always hated: 'Arry from the East End, making it up as he goes along.
All the while he was complicating his chances of inheriting the England job. The fashion these days is for techno-literate coaches, not ones who confess: "I can't write, so I don't keep anything. I'm the most disorganised person, I'm ashamed to say, in the world. I can't work a computer, I don't know what an email is."
The Tottenham job had elevated Mr Redknapp to the managerial elite.
Now, in the moment of professional self-realisation, he was in the dock near the London Dungeon fighting the charge that £187,000 placed in Rosie 47 amounted to "bungs" that he and Mr Mandaric directed overseas to avoid tax and National Insurance.
He said "bung" was "a sick word" and invoked the Bible like a preacher. Think of Mr Redknapp at work and you picture Luka Modric or Gareth Bale: enterprise, spirit, ingenuity. But around the world's favourite game has grown a vast industry in which huge sums are divided and moved around.
This was the universe of money the revenue took a torch to before laying charges against Mr Redknapp and Mr Mandaric. It took a criminal trial for us to see what football so often lacks: transparency. (© Daily Telegraph, London)
- Paul Hayward
Irish Independent
