Sport 01-11-2002 Crozier Walks... But Will Sven Follow? who: FA chief executive Adam Crozier what: Hands in his resignation where: LONDON when: Yesterday snippet: "English football was last night coming to terms with the loss of one of its leading modernisers," reports The Guardian, "after Adam Crozier resigned as chief executive of the Football Association in the wake of a bitter power struggle with the Premier League over how the game should be run." "The departure of the Scot clears the way for the Premiership clubs to wrest control of the professional game from the `amateurs` of the FA 114 years after the Football League was founded," says The Independent`s Glenn Moore, sceptically. "The resignation followed a fortnight of increasing pressure on Mr Crozier, orchestrated by Premiership chairmen unhappy at what they claimed was his autocratic style". Crozier`s tenacity was "eroded by the character assassination emanating from the professional clubs," says Henry Winter in The Telegraph, "while the craven refusal of Geoff Thompson, the FA`s chairman, to defend his organisation or his chief executive has patently undermined his fitness to govern." Matt Dickinson, chief football correspondent to The Times, speculates that Crozier`s resignation offers England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson the perfect exit strategy, but predicts he will probably stay. "Eriksson is very fond of Crozier, the man who head-hunted him to be England`s first foreign football manager," writes Dickinson, "but probably not fond enough to walk out on a contract worth more than 3.5 million a year." [... more]

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