The latest podcast in BBC Radio 5 Live’s Sport’s Strangest Crimes series, The Trillion Dollar Conman, hears Sven-Göran Eriksson reveal what North Korean officials asked him to do about their 2010 World Cup Group draw.
Hosted by Alice Levine, this is a six-part true story about one conman, Russell King; and how he fooled football bosses, a London bank, and foreign regimes.
The story begins when King seizes control of Notts County FC after a takeover which promises the club untold wealth, alongside a plan to take them from the fourth tier to the Premier league in five years. What follows is one of the most outrageous and bizarre episodes in English football history… and amidst the drama, Notts County FC reach the brink of oblivion.
Sven-Göran Eriksson, who features regularly throughout the podcast, was hired by King as Notts County FC’s Director of Football.
In Episode 4 of the podcast, Sven discusses a trip to North Korea he took with King, who had persuaded him to travel there for the benefit of the football club.
Speaking about his trip to Pyongyang with Russell King, Sven said that he didn’t want to go and asked someone he knew, who worked for the government in England for advice. They told him he absolutely should not go.
Sven says: “Russell came back to me and said, ‘Sven, you have to come. It’s extremely important to the football club.’ So I felt… should I really go? I didn’t want to go, but it was important for the football club, they said.”
North Korea had just qualified for the 2010 World Cup and Sven reveals how North Korean officials had attempted to persuade him to fix their 2010 World Cup Group draw: “They (North Korean representatives) knew I was a member of FIFA Football Committee. They said, ‘Can you please help us?’. ‘Of course I can help you, if I can’, I said. I thought they wanted balls or shoes or something like that.
“They said, ‘We want to have a simple draw’. They wanted to have help with the draw. Of course, I said, ‘Do you really mean what I [think]? I can’t do that. Nobody can do that. That’s absolutely impossible and it’s criminal, even to try.’
“But they never believed me. The amazing thing is that it looked like they don’t believe that I can’t do it – they believed that I just didn’t want to do it. Very strange. That was, I guess, the main reason why I was invited and why it was so important that I went there.”
BBC Radio 5 Live’s Sport’s Strangest Crimes: The Trillion Dollar Conman, available now in full on BBC Sounds.
