Frustrations put strain on the future of Eriksson

The frustrations of international football – which will sooner or later drive Sven Goran Eriksson back to club management – have led England's coach to propose a revolution in the sport's calendar, under which all competitive internationals would be played in a five-week period at the end of the season. Friendly matches like Wednesday's against Australia at Upton Park, so despised by Europe's leading clubs, would virtually disappear.

The plan has already been rejected by Fifa, football's governing body – partly because smaller countries need regular income from matches – and would find little favour even with Eriksson's employers at the Football Association, who are committed to friendlies for financial, sporting and missionary purposes. But putting the idea forward for debate illustrates how difficult the cerebral Swede is finding it to come to terms with his job, exactly two years into a five-year contract.

Speaking at the FA's headquarters in Soho this weekend, he said: "I put a proposal to Fifa that you finish the club season earlier because you don't have any international games in between, then at the end of the season you give around five weeks to all the national teams around the world. At the moment we are putting friendly matches in with clubs playing in Europe the week after. We play on Wednesday evening, then on Saturday at lunchtime it's Manchester United against Arsenal in the FA Cup.

"It's difficult for the players, difficult for me and difficult for the club managers. Something must be done. It must change dramatically, but it will never be resolved if we go on like this."

Eriksson admits having hated international friendlies as a club manager. In his present position, he would like more of them, but has been forced to cut back as the FA agreed to compromise with leading clubs. Last season, England played against Holland three days before the Premiership began – West Ham United's goalkeeper, David James, picking up a serious injury before he had played a game for his new club – and met Sweden in November. This season they settled for a squad get-together at a health club six weeks before Christmas, when Eriksson was desperate to play again and get the previous month's feeble draw at home to Macedonia out of the players' system.

"It's the most boring period in this job," he said. "It's been a long time since October and that was a bad performance, which makes it even harder. When you have a bad game on a Wednesday, you hope to have the next game on Saturday, so you can change things around. I wish I had a game every month but it's impossible... impossible."

The sigh of exasperation as he repeated the word said a lot, prompting the suggestion that if all internationals were played at the end of the season he could spend the other 10 months of the year in more fulfilling (and lucrative) employment with one of the world's biggest clubs. "Are you going to Barcelona?" was the obvious question after last week's speculation about the Spanish club's interest, but in two years in England he has grown accustomed to sidestepping journalistic booby-traps. "To see which game?" was the answer, followed by a stock response to such queries: "My contract is until 2006 and I have no reasons to believe I will not stay. But in football you never know – you lose two games and you are out."

If two losses happened to occur before the end of the European Championship campaign, and England failed to qualify, that could well be the outcome, by what would for once be genuinely mutual consent. In the meantime, Eriksson is looking far enough ahead to express concern about how little preparation time – the same old issue – might be available between the end of next season and the finals. He was appalled to learn that the proposed date for the Champions' League final is only two-and-a-half weeks before the opening game in Portugal.

Bored or not over the past four months, he has had his thinking cap on and come out in support of technology to help referees, and brief time-outs midway through each half to help coaches. He envisages officials at professional matches being able to consult a replay to decide on incidents inside the penalty area and whether the ball crossed the line for a goal.

"It's time to put technology into football and give the referee the opportunity to see what we can see in our living-room. If he's not sure whether it's a penalty or not, and whether the ball is in or not, he should be able to go to the touchline and see. It would avoid a lot of polemics and a lot of mistakes."

All interesting stuff. This week, however, the polemics will centre around what happens over the course of 90 minutes at Upton Park.