Leading article: A window into the soul of Sven Goran Eriksson

Oh, the treachery! It is hard not to smile over the furore concerning Sven Goran Eriksson's admission to a tabloid newspaper "sheikh" that he is tempted by the thought of a lucrative new career beyond the management of England.

Expressions of horror are rolling in thick and fast, accompanied by the usual calls for the Swede to resign for having betrayed the hopes of millions of fans by unfaithfully contemplating flight. And all this in the same year as the World Cup finals.

The whole affair has its sleazy side, no doubt about it. It is also fairly comic - complete with the News of the World's very own pantomime Arab, bearing gifts, or rather the promise of millions of pounds' worth of them. But once the smoke clears, and the clamour dies away, what the entrapment boils down to is that Eriksson was contemplating a new job in a revamped Aston Villa. The only truly compromising point to this sting concerns Eriksson's claim that he could persuade David Beckham to leave Real Madrid and join him. That remark doesn't just sit uncomfortably with the ethic that players are supposed to be equals in the manager's eyes but comes close to breaching the spirit of Football Association rules on luring players out of their existing contracts.

Aside from that, the latest Eriksson drama sheds an interesting light on our emotionally charged attitudes to football as a society - attitudes it might be worth exploring at a time when we are engaged in so much soul-searching on the theme of identity. Indeed, the operative word here is soul, for one of the most striking developments of recent decades has been the projection of clearly religious values on to what was once a far more low-key sporting culture.

The use of such words as betrayal to describe Eriksson's ambitions makes no sense unless he is seen more as the high priest of a shrine than as the manager of a team. It is because football has invaded so much of the emotional space once occupied by faith - and which still is occupied by faith in other countries - that people even pose questions about where Eriksson's heart lies. No one would apply that test to the boss of a corporation, however important. There, the only criteria for remaining at the top are the delivery of results.

When Elizabeth I was asked about the loyalty of some of her subjects, perhaps apocryphally, she mused that she "would not make windows into men's souls" - meaning that it is not a great idea to delve deep into people's hearts and minds if you are after reassurance. Just stick to results. Quite rightly the FA is applying the same yardstick to Eriksson. The man needs to be measured by his team's success on the pitch - not second-guessed over his dreams of the future.